Technical Education

As the Husky volleyball season opener creeps closer, sophomore Kylin Munoz is probably counting down the minutes somewhere, waiting to make her collegiate debut this evening when UW hosts Mercer at 7 p.m.

Munoz was forced to sit out the 2009 season, and was unable to travel on road trips or do much besides practice, after coming to UW after originally signing with BYU. Scott Johnson of The Everett Herald previewed the Husky season today, focusin on Munoz and fellow Snohomish County resident Bianca Rowland.

“I learned lots of patience,” Munoz said of sitting out last season. “Anything that’s worth anything is worth waiting for.”

Senior Jenna Hagglund and head coach Jim McLaughlin also discuss their goals for the year in the piece. Click here to read the full story.

The meltdown in New Jersey over its 11^th-place showing in the Race to the Top competition – one place out of the money — can not be good for education reform. 

As Jamie Davies O’Leary reported here last January the state’s new Commissioner of Education,  Bret Schundler, is “a supporter of charter schools, differentiated teacher pay, and tax credits to fund scholarships for K-12 private schools, reforms that the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) is sure to continue fighting tooth and nail.”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the NJEA who did in Schundler. 

As the New York Times  had it, the Garden State’s Education Commissioner  fibbed to governor Chris Christie about what happened in the state’s recent presentation to the RTT reviewers. Schundler told his boss that it was a simple clerical error; the videotape of the session seems to suggest incompetence.  (See the video released by the U.S. Department of Education

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New students were introduced to the Nazarene Bible College campus last Saturday at an orientation held in their honor at Strickland Chapel. These students gathered to get their student handbooks, other Christian education material, and to hear firsthand about what to expect of this new and exciting adventure that God has called them too. They met and spoke with Dr. Ott, our Vice President for Campus Academic Services, Director of Advantage Program, and Director of Christian Educational Ministries Program along with Dr. Matson, our Vice President for Student Development and Registrar. This significant event is the first step in preparing them for their theological and bible school lessons that are about to begin.

This week was also full of exciting welcoming events and fellowship that brought the families of both students and faculty together.

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Back in July, I wrote a blog post about a change in accommodations for students in Delaware taking a high-stakes reading test. The state allowed fewer students with disabilities to have the reading test read aloud to them, and officials were attributing a drop in test scores to that change.

I know that I was left wondering how reading aloud a reading test could have ever been a valid test accommodation. Hearing the words ultimately changes the test in a fundamental way, doesn’t it?

Now I know the answer, which is: it depends.

Jennifer Randall, a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Center for Educational Assessment, was the lead author of a study just published in August 2010 issue of The Journal of Special Education. In talking with her, I learned much more about test accommodations as well as the complexity of testing.

In her study, Randall tried to find out if read-aloud tests provided a “differential boost” for students with disabilities in Georgia.

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The Obama administration awarded Maryland and the District $325 million Tuesday for efforts to improve schools, a surprising double victory for the Washington region in an education reform contest that could reverberate in the fall elections.

Eight other states, most of them on the East Coast, also won shares of more than $3.3 billion in President Obama’s Race to the Top grant competition. The initiative, which challenges labor unions and state and local leaders to upend the status quo in public education, has helped Obama foment innovation and test-drive ideas about performance pay and national standards that could lay the groundwork for a revision of the No Child Left Behind law.

“This is a breathtaking amount of reform,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters. “What we’re seeing is phenomenal courage around the country.” Duncan said the winners were chosen by expert judges, using a score sheet that his department designed.

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