Episode 56 - Un-American, test-optional, algorithm-graded, low-morale madness!!

Un-American, test-optional, algorithm-graded, low-morale madness!! - All of the Above Episode 56

It can be hard to keep up with everything going on in education during distance learning as the world burns. Don’t worry, we got your back! In this episode we review recent headlines in education, from the drama over test-optional admissions to the looming wave of teacher resignations in light of pandemic teaching. As snowflakes come for the 1619 Project, the robot apocalypse may be upon us as a grading algorithm trashes students’ exam scores. What a time to be in education!

Further RESOURCES (in order of discussion)

DO-NOW HEADLINES

Teacher Morale and Student Enrollment Declining Under COVID-19, Survey Shows

Students across CA still scramble to take SAT/ACT despite them being optional for most colleges this year

Judge Orders UC to Stop Use of SAT/ACT

When Algorithms Give Real Students Imaginary Grades

Trump threatens funding for schools that use the 1619 Project and who engage in critical race theory

EPISODE OVERVIEW

0:00 - Intro

6:45 - Teacher morale is down big at the start of this school year according to a recent survey administered by the EdWeek Research Center.

26:00 - The pandemic has severely interrupted in-person SAT/ACT testing--so much so that many colleges have stopped requiring these tests for admission. While some universities say they won’t accept SAT scores at all, others are giving students the option of reporting their scores. Is “test-optional” fair?

38:25 - With a global pandemic forcing the IB Program to cancel its exams last spring, the elite international education program turned to an algorithm to predict what students WOULD have gotten on the exams. Spoiler alert: it went bad. Real bad.

53:00 - Keep politics out of school, say the politicians who want to label Pulitzer-prize winning work as “un-American.” In this clip from episode 56, Jeff and Manuel discuss the partisan attacks on the 1619 Project and the notion that interrogating race and racism is somehow un-American. If anti-racism is un-American, then racism is... ?

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