Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

The Stack Pack: Summer 2015 You see them all the time, but maybe you have never noticed that they are there. I often refer to them as the elitist parents . They are on the sidelines with you bragging about how their children are part of two competitive traveling soccer teams in addition to the everyone gets to play community league that your child plays for. Their children seem to always get the solos at the school band concert, but probably because they take private lessons for two hours a day, four days a week. Their children do Cub Scouts with your children, but they spend every weekend at extra scout programs so that they can accelerate through their badges and be on track to earn the rank of Eagle Scout before they enter their teenage years. Their children, at age 10, are already taking accelerated online middle school math and science classes from home just so they can “stay ahead”. Their children have calendars that are so busy; it would make your head spin. Elitist p...

Introduction Five years ago, when our high school first implemented its competency education model, we as a faculty reached consensus on our purpose of grading. We believe that the purpose of grading is to communicate student achievement towards mastery of learning targets and standards. Grades represent what students learn , not what they earn . This helped us establish a common set of grading practices that every teacher agreed to use in their classrooms. They include things like the separation of formative and summative assessments (with formatives carrying no more than 10% weight for an overall course grade), the linking of summative assessments to performance indicators which link back to competencies in our grade book; the use of reassessment, the use of a 4.0 letter rubric scale for all assignments and assessments; and the separation of academics from academic behaviors. This article will focus on this last grading practice – from how we developed our academic behavio...

Last month, New York Times ’s writer Elizabeth Harris published a story entitled Tough Tests for Teachers, With Question of Bias . As our nation continues to look for ways to hold our schools accountable for student learning through student tests such as PARCC and SBAC, we have also turned to raising the bar for teacher tests. In 2013, ETS, the testing company that owns the most widely-used teacher test Praxis released an updated version called Praxis Core . ETS marketed the new test as one that was aligned to the Common Core and “designed to be a more rigorous and comprehensive series of assessments in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics.” Harris reports that after a couple years with the new tests, minority students have struggled, creating a question of bias with these new exams. David M. Steiner, Dean of the School of Education at Hunter College and a former New York State education commissioner was quoted as stating, “This is very serious. It reflects, of ...

Last month, New Hampshire’s Governor Maggie Hassan took a bold step in the debate over whether or not students can opt out of standardized testing by vetoed a bill that would have allowed for students to do so. In a Manchester Union Leader article , Hassan was quoted as stating, “ House Bill 603 would conflict with current state educational accountability laws, undercut one of the tools that educators use to evaluate K-12 student progress, and jeopardize federal funding for New Hampshire schools.” Jim Roche, President of the New Hampshire Business and Industry Association , applauded the decision. He stated, “Aside from the very real fiscal ramifications of losing significant education aid to New Hampshire, HB 603 sends a message that our state doesn’t value student achievement and educational excellence. This is not a message that is conducive to economic growth and will likely discourage companies from considering New Hampshire as a state to grow an existing business or locat...