A Message From the CUE Board of Directors

From yesterday’s inbox…

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Fellow CUE Members, It is with a mix of sadness and gratitude that the Board of Directors says goodbye to Mike Lawrence, Chief Executive Officer of CUE, effective August 31, 2017. Mike announced his departure to CUE volunteer leaders on Friday at the Leadership Development Institute in Pacific Grove, CA. Since 2005, Mike has played a critical role in the development and success of the organization, and while we will miss him and his inspiring leadership, we wish him the best in his new endeavors. We want to thank him for the nearly 13 years of dedicated service which involved many significant accomplishments, including: Growing membership to over 10,000 members across 2 states Supporting the creation or reboot of 12 Affiliates and 5 Learning Networks Re-establishing the Fall Conference in American Canyon Diversifying revenue and growing the organization’s reserves Partnering with organizations like iNACOL, ACSA, CETPA and many others to spread CUE’s message and outreach into new territory Moving CUE to a paperless workflow Supporting the creation of several innovative professional development programs, including the Leading Edge Certification and CUE Rock Star Camps. Over the next several months, we will be conducting a search to find CUE’s new Executive Director. During this transition period, it is our priority to find the best leader for CUE, while maintaining a stable and effective organization. We will share the job announcement soon and ask for your help in identifying candidates who can help CUE continue to be successful in the future. To lead CUE in the interim and ensure a smooth transition while the search for a new Executive Director is underway, the Board has appointed Chief Innovation Officer Jon Corippo to serve as Interim Executive Director. As a long-time CUE member, Lead Learner, former Assistant Superintendent and CUE Chief Innovation Officer, Jon’s experience and connection to CUE will provide continuity and support during the transition. Again, we cannot thank Mike enough for the dedication, passion, enthusiasm and motivation he has given CUE over the past 13 years. He will be greatly missed by the staff, Board, members and partners alike. We look forward to following the success of his career and are hopeful and excited for the next chapter of CUE as we continue to support our community of members and our mission. If you have any questions or concerns during this transition process, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Board (http://www.cue.org/boardofdirectors). Sincerely, Andrew Schwab CUE Board President

Copyright © 2017 CUE, All rights reserved. To all current CUE Members Our mailing address is: CUE 877 Ygnacio Valley Road Suite 200 Walnut Creek, CA 94596

Education Week: Teachers’ Union to Take a Critical Look at Online Credit Recovery Programs

This came through my RSS reader a few days ago.  Maybe the NEA will be smart enough not to conduct another media comparison study!

Teachers’ Union to Take a Critical Look at Online Credit Recovery Programs

By Benjamin Herold on July 19, 2017 4:11 PM 

The nation’s largest teacher’s union is going to take a look at the troubled world of online credit recovery.

The “new business item” was approved at the recent convention of the 3-million member National Education Association. It calls for $31,000 to be spent on a review of “existing research, data, and information about Online Credit Recovery Programs (OCRP) that were recently being used in various school districts across the nation.”

The item was overshadowed by the union’s higher-profile actions and statements (such as the adoption of a new charter-school policy, and the suggestion that U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos consider resigning.)

And as my colleague (and longtime union-watcher) Stephen Sawhuck pointed out last year, such new business items often don’t amount to a whole lot.

But the increased scrutiny of online credit recovery is worth watching.

Generally speaking, the term “credit recovery” refers to situations in which students are given a chance to redo coursework or retake a course they previously failed. Sometimes, this happens in a traditional summer-school environment.

Increasingly, though, credit recovery happens online. And that’s where things get pretty murky: As Education Week described in this recent explainer, there’s a real hodgepodge of actual online credit recovery offerings. No one really knows how many students are enrolled in such programs. Research to date has been decidedly mixed. And even proponents of online learning have had some harsh things to say about the practice.

The education media is clearly starting to pay attention, too—in May, Columbia University’s Teacher Project and Slate.com published a harshly critical 8-part series on the topic.

We’re still waiting on word from the NEA on what they hope might come of the review.

---

See also:

• Online Classes in K-12: What You Need to Know
• NEA Convention Explainer: What the Heck Are New Business Items, Anyway?
• NEA to DeVos: Address Our Concerns or Resign

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 for the latest news on ed-tech policies, practices, and trends.

Categories:

• Online Learning
• Teachers

Tags:

• credit recovery
• edtech
• NEA
• teachers’ unions

koko

[CSSE-SCÉÉ] Latest issue of CJE available (40:2 /2017) | Nouveau numéro de la RCÉ disponible (40:2 /2017)

Readers should note the article by Thérèse Laferrière entitled “Les défis de l’innovation selon la théorie de l’activité :  le cas de l’école (éloignée) en réseau.”

Dear Members:

Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’éducation has just published its latest issue at www.cje-rce.ca. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest.

For more information on the authors and their research, please visit our new website: https://cje-rce.ca/authors/

Thank you for your continuing interest in our work,

Katy Ellsworth
acde@telus.net
follow us on Twitter @cje_rce
Managing Editor

_____

Chers membres,

Le plus récent numéro de laRevue canadienne de l’éducation vient d’être publié à l’adresse suivante : www.cje-rce.ca. Nous vous invitons à consulter la table des matières, puis à visiter notre site Web pour y lire les articles qui vous intéressent.

Pour en savoir plus sur les auteurs et leurs recherches, veuillez consulter notre site Web : https://cje-rce.ca/authors/.

Nous vous remercions de l’intérêt que vous portez à notre revue.

Cordiales salutations,

Katy Ellsworth
acde@telus.net
Suivez-nous sur Twitter @cje_rce

Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’éducation Vol 40, No 2 (2017) Table of Contents

http://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/issue/view/114

Celebrating 40 Years of the CJE | Hommage aux 40 ans de la RCÉ

——–

Introduction (1-5)

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook

Developing Teachers’ Professional Learning:  Canadian Evidence and Experiences in a World of Educational Improvement (1-33)

Carol Campbell

Les défis de l’innovation selon la théorie de l’activité :  le cas de l’école (éloignée) en réseau (1-30)

Thérèse Laferrière

Education that Matters (1-15)

Joel Westheimer

Professional Legitimation for Education in Canadian Universities: The Canadian Journal of Education, 1976-1997 (1-23)

Donald Fisher

Vers une jonction de deux pratiques (1-3)

Stéphane Allaire

Evidence-based teaching in the 21st Century: The missing link (1-6)

William J. Hunter

My Acquaintance with the CJE/RCE, 1988-1992 (1-7)

William Bruneau

——–

Articles

A Well Place to Be: The Intersection of Canadian School-Based Mental Health Policy with Student and Teacher Resiliency (1-30)

Mary Ott,            Kathy Hibbert,   Susan Rodger,   Alan Leschied

The Ontario Sexual Health Education Update: Perspectives from the Toronto Teen Survey (TTS) Youth (1-24)

June Larkin,        Sarah Flicker,     Susan Flynn,       Crystal Layne,    Adinne

Schwartz,            Robb Travers,    Jason Pole,         Adrian Guta

Cheminement scolaire d’élèves en difficulté adaptation ou d’apprentissage en enseignement secondaire (1-30)

Philippe Tremblay

Influence of Cognitive CoachingSM on the Development of Self-efficacy and Competency of Principals (1-23)

Todd Rogers,     Cal Hauserman,                Jacqueline Skytt

Conditions favorables et défavorables au développement de pratiques inclusives en enseignement secondaire : les conclusions d’une métasynthèse (1-29)

Nadia Rousseau,              Mathieu Point,  Karelle Desmarais,           Raymond Vienneau

Encadrement offert par des superviseurs universitaires en formation à l’enseignement : le point de vue de stagiaires finissants en ÉPS (1-30)

Carlo Spallanzani,             François Vandercleyen, Sylvie Beaudoin,               Jean-François

Desbiens

Problematizing Complexities and Pedagogy in Teacher Education Programs:

Enacting Knowledge in a Narrative Inquiry Teacher Education Discourse Community (1-30)

Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker,            Anne Murray-Orr,           Jennifer

Mitton-Kukner,                Shelley M. Griffin,           Debbie Pushor

Le processus de coévaluation entre superviseurs et étudiants en formation initiale des enseignants du primaire (1-27)

Stéphane Colognesi,      Catherine Van Nieuwenhoven

Brains Unlimited: Giftedness and Gifted Education in Canada before Sputnik

(1957) (1-26)

Jason Ellis

Methodologically Historicizing Social Studies Education: Curricular Filtering and Historical Thinking as Social Studies Thinking (1-26)

Bryan Smith

Historical Hegemony or Warranted Adaptation? A Response to Smith (1-10)

Lindsay Gibson,                Roland Case

Unwieldy Social Studies and Traces of Historical Thinking: A Response to Gibson and Case (1-7)

Bryan Smith

School Principals and Students with Special Education Needs: Leading Inclusive Schools (1-31)

Steve Sider,        Kimberly Maich,               Jhonel Morvan

Programmes d’insertion professionnelle dans les commissions scolaires de Queìbec et perseìveìrance des enseignants du primaire et du secondaire en deìbut de carrieÌre (1-26)

Amelie Desmeules,         Christine Hamel,               Eric Frenette

——–

Book Reviews/Recensions d’ouvrages

The Oxford Handbook of Reading (1-3)

Iman Tohidian

Diversity and Leadership (1-4)

Kaschka Watson

DSM-5 Diagnosis in the Schools (1-3)

Alexandria Stathis

Practical Handbook of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support: Building Academic and Behavioral Success in Schools (1-3)

Nancy Wilder

How Children Learn to Write Words (1-4)

Christina Belcher

Learning knowing sharing: Celebrating successes in K-12 Aboriginal education in British Columbia (1-4)

Amy Parent

 

Canadian Society for the Study of Education Société canadienne pour l’étude de l’éducation http://www.cje-rce.ca
_______________________________________________
CSSE mailing list
CSSE@mailman.srv.ualberta.ca
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More Media Comparison Studies in K-12 Online Learning

While I applaud the federal government and the REL system for doing more research into K-12 distance, online, and blended learning – and the focus on online credit recovery, given how much it is used is admirable, but do we really need yet another media comparison study in the field?

Does online learning work for LAUSD students taking makeup classes? Study aims to find out

Researchers have received a $3.26-million federal grant to study the effectiveness of online academic credit recovery programs — the kind that allow students to make up failed classes and graduate on time — in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The grant, from the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, will pay for the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research group, to study how online makeup courses for Algebra 1 and ninth-grade English compare with retaking the class in person.

To continue reading, visit http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-credit-recovery-grant-20170714-story.html

The results will be one of three things:

1. there is no difference between online credit recovery and traditional credit recovery
2. there is a positive difference in favour of online credit recovery over traditional credit recovery
3. there is a positive difference in favour of traditional credit recovery over online credit recovery

However, the overall conclusion of what this tells us will be nothing!  In these two situations, there are so many things that are different that one cannot attribute the fact one is better or worse simply to the medium in which the credit recovery is delivered.

Essentially, this is a replication by AIR of their studies of online credit recovery in Chicago.  In that earlier study, according to this article, the researchers found:

“They determined the online course materials to be more rigorous and found that 76% of face-to-face students passed their credit recovery courses, compared with 66% of online students, Heppen said. But students in the face-to-face classes also scored better on an algebra assessment that AIR developed, and the two groups graduated at the same rates three years later.”

So did the online students perform worse because the course materials were harder?  Or did the researchers conclude that the online course materials were harder because more students failed (which would be a false conclusion)?  What kind of human support was available to the students in both groups?  What kind of interaction did the students in both groups have with their teacher or various resources?  How much time did each group spend on the content?  How were both conditions designed, delivered, and supported? How much was spent on providing the experience for each group?  These are just some of the questions that would need to be answered to actually tell us anything meaningful.

The fact that the face-to-face group did better in terms of passing the course and on a contrived assessment, and both groups did the same in the long-term tells us nothing.  Other than the federal government through the REL system continues to waste money on K-12 distance, online, and blended learning research that could be going to answer meaningful, useful research questions.

EDTECH537 – Potential Hazards Of Blogging

Earlier this summer, as you were preparing your blogging disclosure, we discussed some of the cautions about blogging. You read through such entries as:

• Bloggers Need Not Apply
• The Risks of Blogging….
• Confessions of a Scholar-Blogger
• They Shoot Messengers, Don’t They?
• Why I Blog Under My Own Name – Part II

Now that you have been blogging for a few weeks, have you encountered any situations that have made you feel uncomfortable in your blogging? Are there any potential issues that you could foresee occurring in the future (particularly when school is back in session and you have students, colleagues and an administrator to consider)? How have you or will you deal with these delicate situations?

As I described in the Week 5 overview, please post your response as a comment to this blog entry. For those reading this who are not a part of my EDTECH537 – Blogging In The Classroom course, feel free to leave examples you have experienced.