Now when you talk to new teachers—which I do regularly as an education reporter—their biggest complaint is that no one teaches them how to control a classroom. For the small fortune they spend to get a teaching degree, they get plenty of pedagogy (“Reflections on Learning” is a typical course name), which they generally don’t use. But their professors never seem to get around to teaching “Keeping Kids Under Control 101.” Student-teaching stints are typically done in “middle-class districts that are well ordered,” says Aaron M. Pallas, professor of sociology and education at Teachers College at Columbia University, and few colleges offer practical training for those planning to work in tougher settings.



The solution is probably not to encourage teachers to bean kids with erasers. But something is needed. Jennifer Scoggins, 32, a New York teacher currently working on her Ph.D., said she had no chance to succeed when she began her first teaching job in 2001. She was asked to take over a second-grade class in Harlem midyear—after several other teachers had given up. The kids were out of control when she arrived, and things never improved. “Chairs were being thrown, kids were stabbing each other with pencils,” she said. “I felt absolutely like a total failure. The only thing I was proud of was that I never cried in front of the kids. But I cried everywhere else: in supply closets, on the subway, at home.” Even though Scoggins had earned a master’s in education, she said, “very practical things were never taught.”

» via Newsweek

Grades awarded to U.S. undergraduates have risen substantially in the last few decades, and grade inflation has become particularly pronounced at selective and private colleges, a new analysis of data on grading practices has found.

In “Grading in American Colleges and Universities,” published Thursday in Teachers College Record, Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University professor of geology, and Christopher Healy, an associate professor of computer science at Furman University, illustrate that grade point averages have risen nationally throughout most of the last five decades. The study also indicates that the mean G.P.A. at an institution is “highly dependent” upon the quality of its students and whether it is public or private..

» via Inside Higher Ed

Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room.

Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found that Twitter is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture.

» via Mashable

At Virginia Tech, where tailgating and raucous apartment complex parties are time-honored rituals, university officials are turning increasingly to Mom and Dad to curb problem underage drinking.

This semester, the school in Blacksburg, Va., began notifying parents when their under-21 students are found guilty of even minor alcohol violations such as getting caught with a beer in a dorm room.

Although it’s common for colleges to alert parents of major alcohol offenses — or when a student faces suspension — Virginia Tech is part of a small but growing number sending letters home on minor ones.

» via MSNBC

A federal appeals court is ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 — $750 a track — for file sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader.

The decision Thursday by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a Texas federal judge who had ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400, or $200 per song. The lower court had granted her an “innocent infringer’s” exemption to the Copyright Act’s minimum of $750 per track because she said she didn’t know she was violating copyrights and thought file sharing was akin to internet radio streaming.

The appeals court, however, said the woman was not eligible for such a defense — even if it was true she was between 14 and 16 years old when the infringing activity occurred on Limewire. The reason, the court concluded, is that the Copyright Act precludes such a defense if the legitimate CDs of the music in question provide copyright notices.

» via Wired

Reading method: most viewed ebooks online as opposed to using devices.

How much time did they spend viewing an ebook: 13 minutes

How much time spent on a single page: spent less than a minute a page. Go to page, get the info and then get out.

» via TeleRead

There are videos showing off card tricks, horsemanship, jump rope and stencils — and lots of rap songs, including one by a young woman who performed two weeks after oral surgery, with her mouth still rubber-banded shut.

There is also Rhaina Cohen’s video, working off the saying “You never truly know someone until you have walked a mile in her shoes,” and featuring the blue sandals from her bat mitzvah, the white sneakers she bought cheaply in Britain, and the black heels in which she “stood next to Hillary Clinton.”

It is reading season at the Tufts University admissions office, time to plow through thousands of essays and transcripts and recommendations — and this year, for the first time, short YouTube videos that students could post to supplement their application.

About 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants submitted videos. Some have gotten thousands of hits on YouTube.

» via The New York Times

Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.

Students who pass but aspire to attend a selective college may continue with college preparatory courses in their junior and senior years, organizers of the new effort said. Students who fail the 10th grade tests, known as board exams, can try again at the end of their 11th and 12th grades. The tests would cover not only English and math but other subjects like science and history.

The new system of high school coursework with the accompanying board examinations is modeled largely on systems in high-performing nations including Denmark, England, Finland, France and Singapore.

» via The New York Times

The latest snapshot of how University of California students spend their time suggests sleep and socializing were far more important than classes and studying to the average undergraduate there. But that was two years ago, before institutions and families plunged into economic turmoil, and things may have changed.

In a survey conducted on all nine of the university’s undergraduate campuses in the spring of 2008 and completed by 63,600 students, students on average reported getting six-and-a-half hours of sleep each night and spending 41 hours a week on social and leisure activities. Meanwhile, students said they spent a little more than 28 hours each week combined on class and homework.

» via Inside Higher Ed

The institute found that people who had attained at least a bachelor’s degree were more likely than Americans whose formal education ended with a high-school diploma to take a liberal stance on certain controversial social issues. For example, 39 percent of people whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree supported same-sex marriage, compared with 25 percent with a high-school diploma. The trend continued with advanced degrees: About 46 percent of people with master’s degrees supported same-sex marriage, as did 43 percent of people with Ph.D.’s.

Previous surveys have found that, in general, college does not bring students up to a high level of civics knowledge. According to the institute’s 2008 report, based on a survey of 2,500, people whose highest level of educational attainment was a bachelor’s degree correctly answered 57 percent of the questions, on average. That is three percentage points lower than a passing grade, according to the survey’s authors.

Even earlier surveys showed that years in college were only slightly correlated to civics expertise. For a 2006 report the institute surveyed 14,000 college freshmen and seniors on basic civics questions. It found seniors answered an average of 53 percent of the questions correctly, just 1.5 percent higher than freshmen. (After the 2006 report was released, some experts questioned the study’s methodology and focus on a small range of facts.)

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)