Blogs on Comprehensive Assessment

I noticed Dr. Jesse Bemley at conferences, but I was not sure who he is and what he does until this summer. When I was finally introduced to him, I found him to be a soft-spoken man but one with a can-do personality.

"How many effective schools would you have to see to be persuaded of the educability of poor children? If your answer is more than one, then I submit that you have reasons of your own for preferring to believe that pupil performance derives from family background instead of school response to family background. We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven't so far." -- Ronald Edmonds, Harvard University

This week, I met with Fairview Elementary School teachers to discuss spring 2006 California Standards Test results.

Moderator's note: The post below is in response to the following email we received:

"I am a teacher in a high school special ed program. It is often hard to find materials for my students. I need ones that are written to a population of readers in grades 2-4, but for teenagers. I have previously used the books Charlotte's Web and Holes. The problem is that I need discussion references for this grade level 9-12. I am trying to set up a curriculum for next year with reading in world, American, and English literature that is written low, but has enough to keep the interest of my students and is available on audio. Can anyone help with suggestions, but please remember I have very little money for class sets and I will probably be the one buying some of the books. Thank you."