Both contemporary popular and scholarly discourse on teacher development and evaluation assumes the truth of a certain view of normative human behavior, one that holds that skill in a given domain is predicated upon the application of maxims, rules, or principles in a given situation. Such a view would allow one to isolate behaviors associated with expert practice, distill the rules that give rise to them, and both develop new teachers and evaluate practicing teachers on the basis of such maxims. In this essay, Derek Gottlieb argues that the phenomenon of skillful teaching, and studies thereof, expose the inconsistencies and confusion underlying this model, encouraging the field generally to consider alternative holistic accounts of expert teacher practice as we seek to train and appraise great teachers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light many of the essential nonacademic functions of U.S. schools, such as meals, mental health support, and opportunities for students whose families lack resources. Yet, as Derek Gottlieb and Jack Schneider explain, schools continue to be evaluated primarily on students’ academic outcomes. They call for a reconsideration of current accountability measures to take into account the multifaceted work of schools.
State and federal policymakers “see” school performance via formal measures — data collected with attendance sheets and standardized tests. Such an approach, though not without its merits, is extremely limited and inherently exposed to the threat of systematic misperception and unintended consequences, especially as policymakers try to use data to leverage on‐the‐ground change. In this essay, Jack Schneider and Derek Gottlieb discuss the limitations of present accountability systems and advocate for the inclusion of what they call “ordinary measures.” Long positioned as inferior to their formal counterparts, such measures offer much to clarify the picture of schools that good governance depends on. According to Schneider and Gottlieb, using ordinary measures, paired with deliberative evaluation processes, will improve the validity and utility of educational accountability systems.
others related to the civil rights movement. In addition, Favors combed HBCU campusbased newspapers and the Black press to craft and tell a story of HBCU students' contributions to African Americans' freedom struggle in the United States. This is significant given that the perspectives reflected in these sources reveal the thoughts and viewpoints of those living within the constricted confines of a Jim Crow South.American society sought to crush the hopes and aspirations of its African American citizens. The African American community has vehemently fought this in many ways for more than a century. Favors's work shows how college students at HBCUs contributed to African Americans' freedom struggle over almost a century and a half, beginning before the Civil War and lasting through the modern civil rights movement and into the mid-1970s. I believe Favors's work begins to scratch the surface of HBCUs and their students' contributions to American history. His work calls for education historians and historians of the African American experience to look more closely at the institutions created in the wake of the Civil War that sheltered and educated generations of African Americans seeking, as did their ancestors, an education and their right to be participatory citizens of the American republic. There are stories that remain untold about these unique institutions. This work should inspire others to more fully uncover the rich history of these institutions and their students' contributions to our shared American history and African Americans' freedom struggle in the United States.
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