Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

Meeting deadlines is considered a life skill that all students much have. For this class, students are expected to turn in all work by the due date. Assignments that are turned in late will be subject to the following penalty: 10 points (one letter grade) will be deducted for every day the assignment is late. Assignments that are more than three days late will not be accepted for a grade, NO EXCEPTIONS! If you are a secondary teacher, chances are the above statement may look familiar to you as a way teachers often approach the grading of late work. The debate over whether or not to charge students a penalty for late work is not new to American Education. For years, proponents have argued that a penalty is the best way to hold students accountable for meeting deadlines, a life-long skill. Opponents like Rick Wormeli argue that assigning penalties changes the true meaning of grades – to report academic achievement and progress. He goes on to suggest that submitting work late ...

Nearly two decades ago, in 1989, then Princeton University student Wendy Kopp understood our country’s growing need to be able to compete in the global economy with a workforce that had evolving skills and knowledge. She also noted that our country was faced with a teacher shortage and droves of high-poverty urban and rural schools that for decades had been failing our children. She embarked on a plan to recruit high-performing college graduates to teach in these schools. That year her plan, which came to be known as the Teach for America program, started with just 100 part-time student recruiters from 100 universities. From its early beginnings as Kopp’s senior thesis, Teach for America quickly grew. By the mid 1990’s, with a backing from the federal government by be included as part of the AmeriCorps program, over 45,000 students had been reached by nearly 850 active volunteers. A decade later, that number ballooned to over 200,000 students from over 3,600 active volunt...