by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 19, 2015 | Blog, Issues in Education
I stumbled across this little priceless little ditty left by SomeDAM Poet in the comments sections of this post on Diane Ravitch’s blog and felt compelled to repost it:
“Don’t drink the Colemanade”
Stop! Don’t drink the Colemanade!
The Coleman Core that Coleman made
What Coleman aided has culminated
In public schools calumniated
And to that I would add my own poetic two cents:
The Colemanade that Coleman made
Has percolated unallayed
In classrooms Coleman has created
His Standards march on, unabated
Now Coleman’s Core and Coleman’s aid
Do flow to schools now desiccated
The urgency must be conveyed
to clean the mess that Coleman made.
In all seriousness, though, anyone who’s even the least bit concerned about Common Core should read Diane’s post. And Lyndsey Layton’s article. And Mercedes Schneider’s book (both of them, actually).
I cannot overstate the importance of what these people have to say about public education in the United States right now.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 13, 2015 | Blog, The New SAT
If you’ve looked at the redesigned PSAT or SATs, you’ve probably noticed that the reading section now includes a number of “supporting evidence” sets — that is, pairs of questions in which the second question asks which lines provide the best “evidence” for the answer to the previous question.
The first thing to understand about these questions is that they are not really about “evidence” in the usual sense. Rather they are comprehension questions asked two different ways. The answer to the second question simply indicates where in the passage the answer the first question appears.
So although paired questions may look very complicated, that appearance is deceiving. The correct answer to the first question must appear in one of the four sets of lines in the second question. As a result, the easiest way to approach these questions is usually to plug the line references from the second question into the first question. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 3, 2015 | Blog, SAT Grammar (Old Test), The New SAT
So I’m in the middle of rewriting the workbook to The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar. After the finishing the new SAT grammar and reading books, I somehow thought that this one would be easier to manage. Annoying, yes, but straightforward, mechanical, and requiring nowhere near the same intensity of focus that the grammar and reading books required. Besides, I no longer have 800 pages worth of revisions hanging over me — that alone makes things easier.
However, having managed to get about halfway through, I have to say that I’ve never had so much trouble concentrating on what by this point should be a fairly rote exercise. Even writing three or four questions a day feels like pulling teeth. (So of course I’m procrastinating by posting here.)
In part, this is because I have nothing to build on. With the other two book, I was revising and/or incorporating material I’d already written elsewhere; this one I have to do from scratch. I’m also just plain sick and tired of rewriting material that I already poured so much into the first time around.
The problem goes beyond that, though. (more…)
