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Steve Zemelman

Teachers' stories need to be heard
March 04, 2013
By: Steve Zemelman

 Chicago is a scrappy place for education these days.

Teacher strikes, school closings, new standards, new standardized tests, new teacher evaluations, too much testing, unequal resources between neighborhoods, charters vs. traditional school advocates, increasing childhood poverty, lack of recognition for schools that are doing well, reduced resources overall--so where are teacher voices in all of this?

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Common Core: Caution on narrative writing
November 07, 2011
By: Steve Zemelman

There’s certainly a lot to like in the new Common Core State Standards embraced by the Chicago Public Schools – serious attention to writing, emphasis on reading non-fiction (which college students must study), and a focus on higher-level thinking. At the same time, teachers’ first obligation is to children’s learning, so they must apply these standards judiciously, not unthinkingly. And the standards have some limits.

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'Models' resented more than copied
October 30, 2007
By: Steve Zemelman

We create school report cards, compare schools, and hope American-style competition will spur change. But while there are schools making a difference in the poorest neighborhoods, few of their neighbors imitate them. Why?

Well, spreading good ideas from one school to another is challenging. There's no tradition for it, and it's not clear anyone really knows how to do it. Individual schools are worlds unto themselves, and this isolation has hobbled school reform efforts repeatedly over the past 100 years. We ignore it at our peril.

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