Archive by Author | Stacy

Twitter Report for January 24-30

 

This week on Twitter there was a fairly even spread of ideas. The biggest topics included test scores, teacher evaluations, teacher unions, California’s changing education legislation, and school funding models. Compared to last week, people were not talking about the purpose of education as much (I saw one unique post) nor whose voice is most important in reform debates. Voice really only came into play in discussions over funding, but the focus was on the modeling of funding. I would say that this was due to the discourse surrounding the State of the Union Address. It informed most, to all, of the topics being discussed on Twitter in regards to education and policy.

For test scores and teacher evaluations the dissent was pretty overwhelming. Most of those commenting on these systems were educators, and they were strongly opposed to the current model of standardized tests and proposed teacher evaluations. Cited reasons against testing mainly referred to the cost of testing and the failure to really address the issues of inequality in schools. A similar argument was used against teacher evaluations, stating that they would not accurately represent a teacher’s potential since they’re being judged on student and school performances. These were the only addresses to teacher evaluation, again due to the State of the Union Address which emphasized data collection as a means to pick out “good” teachers. This topic incited a lot of exasperation, with little dialogue other than denouncing the use of more tests to determine teacher fitness. Several tweets linked to studies or outside opinion pieces. Examples:

plugusin Bill Ferriter

A great @cohend #edpolicy bit on standardized test scores and teacher evaluations: Here We Go Again – ow.ly/8B8Qb #edreform

rpondiscio Robert Pondiscio

I have lots of issues with test-driven reform. But when I hear “corporate reform agenda” I stop listening. Sorry. #edchat #edreform

AnthonyCody Anthony Cody

U say “Stop teaching 2 the test” yet NCLB waivers require states 2 evaluate teachers & principals based on test scores. Why?#WHChat #EdSOTU

AnthonyCody Anthony Cody

How do you intend to IDENTIFY good teachers? Current plans emphasize test scores in spite of yr words. #EDSOTU #WHchat

A topic that did not appear in last week’s report was a wide-spread review of articles discussing the validity and usefulness of teacher unions. There was no common opinion on this topic. Some who provided links to articles cited the importance of the support provided them through unions. One woman in particular even mentioned how she was not a fan before she started to try and mobilize a movement to save arts funding at her school. The union stepped in and helped gather support from parents and teachers for the cause. On the opposite end of the spectrum though was someone who posted an article about the possible sabotage unions cause unknowingly to reform debates. It is obviously a very contentious issue, but if the volume of tweets are any indication, it is not as important to the Twitter-verse as evaluations and scores.

The last two major topics were the changing education policies in California and school funding models. California’s governor has been gaining a lot of attention lately for his views on education reform. Governor Brown is proposing a temporary tax increase on sales and wealthier individuals. It would make sense that one of the states, which holds sway over classroom materials production, would garner so much coverage, especially when daring to raise funds instead of cut them from education in this economy. To further his education cost cutting, he proposed changes to science requirements in schools. Currently students in high school must complete two years of science, but with the new proposal they would only be required to complete one. This was largely criticized on Twitter for dropping a technical/science field when the U.S. is already behind in technical fields. There was no response posted to Twitter, either directly in a tweet or through a link. Upon running a Google search for more news on this topic, nothing comes up. Since this search is now a week after the initial tweets appeared, they are no longer accessible on Twitter for reference, but it would appear this policy might have been a conflagration by angry Tweeters.

As for the funding critiques, there actually is a research paper that deals with the notion of market driven/competitive schooling reforms. It talks about the negative effects of this model, based off data collected in Minnesota. This article was relevant to discussions surrounding the “School Choice Week” event. It is a national week created to discuss schooling options and how they function together. School choices are classified as public, charter and private. The hotly debated topic for this week was funding of these different systems, especially since a growth in charter schools has been seen in the last few years. The article can be accessed on Scribd.

These topics were largely informed by the State of the Union Address. The hashtag #edSOTU became very popular as people discussed what President Obama had called attention to in his speech. The views posted on his speech were mostly negative, frustrated and/or angry comments. The popular education topics on Twitter this week, were mostly correlated to the State of the Union address, or based around “School Choice Week.” The major buzzword throughout all of these discussions was inequality, referencing the education gap (both in K-12 and in college attendance), and affordability of higher education. The general tone of the Twitter feed was negative and disparaging. This is not unexpected, as many people are becoming disenchanted with government education reforms. However, it was shocking that there were only a handful of neutral to positive Tweets in the span of a week. It is often the case on Twitter that people feed off of each other, and with the contention over the State of the Union, it is makes sense that the feed was very critical; Politics seems to garner more criticism on public forums than support. It is an interesting phenomenon that as a society we often fixate on the issues, rather than the successes. Instead of always focusing on the problems, it might be a nice change to focus some energy on finding what is working and highlighting it for inspiration. Since there was not a lot of dialogue happening in this current conversation, perhaps coming at it from a different direction will invoke some new solutions through open discourse, instead of just criticisms.

Anomalies of the Week (singular tweets on interesting topics)

  • New Hampshire passed a new law that allows any public school parent to object to a text/subject matter and work with the teacher and principal to develop an alternate curriculum specifically for their child at their own expense.
  • A new wave of school ID cards that would include a QR code linked to a data base with a student’s picture and information are proposed to help reduce cheating on standardized tests. The cards are being referred to as ‘DNA,’ however there doesn’t appear to be any actual DNA in use.
  • There was an article about gamification of education linked through a tweet. An interesting learning concept being debated across disciplines.