Brandon Kirkpatrick

@vanshb_95 @asanwal The traditional school calendar was designed to facilitate workers for harvest times.

@asanwal the traditional school calendar is a legacy product built for a single income household from the 1950s. it desperately needs a modern patch update.

The Ed tech experiment has failed. The quicker and sooner our nation schools realize that, and move on to effective methods, the clicker and sooner we can recover from the damage it has done.

@karenvaites Oklahoma legislature is currently revising its early literacy legislation. Sadly, haven’t heard any talk of knowledge building. Disheartened by this.

‘The “Southern Surge” refers to the fact that four Southern states—Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee—have seen improvements in their NAEP reading scores at a time of general decline. Many media outlets have lumped all these states together and attributed their relative success to—wait for it—phonics. But these states aren’t all doing the same thing. Mississippi and Alabama have focused just on phonics, while Tennessee and especially Louisiana have succeeded in getting districts to adopt curricula that also build academic knowledge beginning in the early grades. On its own, effective phonics instruction, while crucial, leads only to short-term gains. Combined with a knowledge-building curriculum in the early grades, it lays the groundwork for success at higher grade levels.’ I’m zero percent surprised to see @natwexler’s posts on the Southern Surge and NAEP outcomes topping her list. Key point above!

@karenvaites Quality behavior precedes quality instruction. It is a universal truth in education. Note the emphasis on order in the top schools in Britain. Also, I would say that schools that take a deliberate approach to literacy instruction also take a deliberate approach to behavior.

I talked to education leaders and teachers in all four states, and no one brought this up, FWIW. I’m all for reasonable discipline policies, but I don’t think this explains it. I bet we could find a list of states with stringent discipline laws and no reading gains.

@greg_ashman The existence of one condition does not preclude the importance of another. Hungry children can be fed and taught to read at the same time. And long term, teaching them to read will provide prevention.

This is a key divide in education: Hopelessness versus agency. We should all be more like Engelmann.

Curriculum choices are not value neutral decisions. open.substack.com/pub/theknowedg…

The crisis is much bigger than anyone realizes. Functional level reading and writing skills are absent in a bulk of cases of our graduates. And the answer has been more screen time and less rigor. An abrupt turn is needed quickly.

@MrDanielBuck "Kids, hand in your phone; and open your Chromebook."

Sprinting into vacation.

@RandySwift9 @JonMHenderson1 @DrTozzo @greg_ashman Please share. I’ve been searching for some time to find data that supports the efficacy of BTC.

@JonMHenderson1 @DrTozzo @greg_ashman Our data spans over two years and demonstrates effectiveness.

Recently I’ve had the misfortune of being reminded how widespread BTC has become. Before years pass by, and mathematics education has its very own Lucy Calkins, continue to talk about it with colleagues. @greg_ashman in one of his recent posts says it nicely; “Building Thinking Classrooms has precisely zero robust evidence of effectiveness and is based on the fundamentally misconceived idea that unless students are engaged in discovery learning, they are not ‘thinking’. It is therefore likely to be a less effective approach than explicit teaching and disastrous for the most disadvantaged students.” ~Greg Ashman

Every wasted minute of progressive instruction and PBL requires twice the direct intervention later. Teach it direct. Teach it right the first time.

Ten years from now, Emily Hanford will be doing another exposé—on how much the Chromebook craze has hurt our educational system.

@mnachievement @mctm_mn Amazing that so many educators will try ANY type of instructional fad EXCEPT sitting kids in desks, providing direct instruction, working problems with them, and supporting them as they individually practice.

Prior Lake and other districts across MN have already seen disastrous outcomes from implementing BTC. And yet it’s all the rage at this year’s @mctm_mn conference. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

@swamidass @VPrasadMDMPH You are missing the point that we hold elections every 4 years. It’s time to renegotiate if you want taxpayer money.

@VPrasadMDMPH You are missing that we hold negotiations every five years about the indirect rates, and they are mutually agreed to...

Right now, unis are suing Trump over indirects and NONE are hosting debates on what the right indirect rate should be or how to reform NIH They are making the same COVID mistake by stiffing important discussions They should take the lead in this dialog My latest!

@garethkthomas @EachOtherUK The only people it makes feel uncomfortable are those without any reasoning abilities. Unsocial behavior is unsocial behavior, regardless of environment. The reality is that consequences are more dire outside of school than within.

@pfmanna @rickhess99 Please provide proof of non-Ivy league professors and administrators who were pushing back against DEI. Because there’s a litany of professors who were persecuted for questioning its efficacy.

@rickhess99 People were saying it, Rick, especially outside the Ivy League bubble that usually captures your attention. Related question to you: Who on the right pushed back against Rufo's "rebranding all DEI as crazy" strategy? I don't remember hearing those voices. Who did I miss?

I’ve spoken to many, many people in the past month who’ve said something like, “Yeah, some of this DEI stuff really did go too far. There’s good DEI and bad DEI. And we need to make that distinction.” Well, that’s a huge opportunity. If they’d been saying that and acting on it all along, we wouldn’t be here right now. I think a lot of people wound up mouthing words that didn’t fully reflect their views of equality, fairness, merit, inclusion, or respect for difference. This is a second chance to get that right.

A solid first step in school improvement would be to remove the word “ever-changing” from every vision/mission statement it appears in.

@JamesAFurey Which is underlying question we have to ask: What percentage of teachers, especially MS & HS, have the depth of subject matter expertise to teach through direct methods on a daily basis?

Yes. The teachers I know who teach using more direct, guided methods simply know more about their subject than those who don’t.

@gmiller @FischerKing64 Aspberger’s was a very useful delineation when describing a sizable subset of the population. Moving away from the term has muddled the conversation. Alas, if we only use spectrum disorder as a description, everyone is on that spectrum.

Aspergers syndrome is a much better description of high-IQ nerdy male eccentricity. (I'm Aspy). Smushing it into the 'autism spectrum' (as psychiatry did in 2013) was a colossal blunder, IMHO. And I think it was driven almost entirely by political concerns of not wanting to name something after Dr. Hans Asperger (1906-1980), who was involved to some degree with the Nazis.

The autism thing is overdone. Conflating people banging their heads against the wall with weird guys good at math makes no sense. We pathologize male behavior - of collecting, systemizing, organizing, calculating. Part of the explosion of autism is female teachers conquering elementary schools who don’t like boys. Don’t understand, aren’t as smart as they are. They send the boys off - and medicalize something normal.

@AprilJNiemela @FixingEducation It's not just district level policy; the origin moves further upstream to funding formula, federal monitoring, etc. There are strong disincentives with noticeable effects on school operations that discourage removing students from the classroom, regardless of their offense.

@FixingEducation Violence doesn't belong in a classroom. Period. When funding is tied to student attendance, however, students remain in classes. Same with chronic disruptors. Admin hands are often tied. It's district-level policy that prioritizes money over safety.

Did you know? Doctors can refuse service if they feel they cannot do so safely. Should teachers have the right to refuse services to students who are consistently violent and whom we believe are a threat to our safety, as well as the safety of other students?