History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Assessment drives learning: How to drive to a new place
- 04-19-2011
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Blog by James Gee/Huffington Post
Today many of our schools are victims of a "content fetish." Students learn to parrot facts and formulas for tests. However, we know from decades of research that memorizing facts and formulas does not correlate with being able to use them to solve problems. The world is chock full of facts with more discovered every minute. Facts only become important when one knows what to do with them, when they become tools for problem solving, argumentation, and interventions in the world. And then they are retained for the long term, a free benefit of thinking and acting with facts and formulas and not just memorizing them for tests. Of course, our nation will, in the end, suffer when we run short of problem solvers and become a nation of Trivial Pursuit players or, worse, people who just make up their facts for their own ideological ends. There are many ways to teach for deep problem solving, especially using digital tools. (more...)
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