I am a retired high school media coordinator in a rural area of NC.
Joined June 2013
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Julie Davis retweeted
A student asked author Frank McCourt, a longtime NYC high school teacher, why they had to read a particular book. “You’ll read it for the same reason your parents waste their money on your piano lessons,” he replied. “So you won't be a boring little shite the rest of your life.”
As I get older I continue to stray away from the idea that everything we learn in school needs to be useful when we get to adulthood
Yes there is fluff in school and we are not going to use everything we learn -- some things should probably be cut
But can't we learn things for the sake of learning itself?
Physics, chemistry, etc. are amazing and if taught well can be so fascinating and beautiful
I took a classics class in college (because I had no other choice), was dreading it, and it ended up being one of my favorite classes I've ever taken
I don't need what I learned for my adult life but I'm so happy I took the class since my professor was amazing and made the class an incredible experience
There doesn't always need to be a means to an end
Learning can be the thing itself
Julie Davis retweeted
School logic:
Give every student a laptop, then ask the teacher to spend the lesson making sure thirty laptops aren’t being used for anything except the worksheet we could have just printed instead.
Julie Davis retweeted
For God's sake, what has happened to men that they let young women go through this on their own?
Julie Davis retweeted
If a semester’s worth of learning can be recovered in a few afternoons of clicking through a computer program, the school owes everyone who took the actual course an explanation.
Julie Davis retweeted
I don’t understand so many teachers’ impulse to put into the hands of teenagers only books that explore the thoughts of fictional teenagers who are in circumstances that closely mirror their own.
One of the chief pleasures of literature is being introduced to someone who’s been dead for two hundred years and has something considerably more interesting to say than you do.
We should not encourage kids to think that their own quotidian and provincial thoughts are the pinnacle of what’s important in the world. They should read the masters and realize how small they are, and how large they can aspire to be.
Julie Davis retweeted
Millions of kids pass through a school system that teaches them they can ignore deadlines, defy authority, neglect their responsibilities, and fail repeatedly without consequence.
Then we send them into society and expect employers, institutions, and the criminal justice system to supply the discipline we lacked the will to impose.
Julie Davis retweeted
Get this
In 1949, classroom teachers made up 70 percent of school staff
In 2022, classroom teachers accounted for only 47.5 percent of total school staff
There are more administrators and aids than actual teachers
Julie Davis retweeted
The problem with only assigning students readings they can relate to is that you end up leaving them exactly as you found them.
Julie Davis retweeted
Feminists fought for a century against the notion that women’s hormones make them crazy and now a room full of women plus Oprah are nodding solemnly at the premise that women’s hormones make them crazy.
Julie Davis retweeted
No city can safely absorb the equivalent of most of its population overnight. Nor can a country preserve its culture and civic institutions if it abandons any expectation that newcomers enter legally, assimilate, and respect its values.
America should watch closely. Sovereignty is not cruelty. Order is not hatred. Secure borders protect lives, preserve nations, and make lawful immigration possible. What we are witnessing in Spain is absolute insanity and a warning we cannot afford to ignore. Common sense is a wonderful gift that was given to us by our creator. Let’s make sure we use it.
Julie Davis retweeted
Students remember more when they write it down on paper. Not type it. Not screenshot it. Write it!
The act of writing slows students down, adds tactile feedback, and helps lock it into memory.
Julie Davis retweeted
Why is it ‘cancelled’ in the U.K. but ‘canceled’ in the U.S.?
Because we gave them that L in 1776.
Julie Davis retweeted
Your child's school has an assistant superintendent for curriculum, an assistant superintendent for instruction, a director of teaching and learning, and a coordinator of academic services. Your child's teacher has thirty-two kids and no copy paper. This is not a funding problem. It is a priority problem.
Julie Davis retweeted
Hear me out:
Whenever I bring up suspensions or expulsions, the response is “but what are we going to do with those kids?” as if it’s the fault of the system
That’s on the parents. They bear final responsibility for that kid, not the school.
And other students shouldn’t have their own learning jeopardized because a few children were poorly parented.
Julie Davis retweeted
Education circa 1880:
Greek, Latin, the Aeneid, Euclid in 8th grade
Education circa 2025:
Remedial math and reading at Harvard
Julie Davis retweeted
The farther administrators are from the daily reality of students and teachers, the more harmful than helpful they become.
Julie Davis retweeted
Schools would be a lot better if they just stayed in their lane, focused on academics, and stopped trying to solve every societal problem
Julie Davis retweeted
Checking sources is a superpower--you would not believe the stuff people sneak into things.
As one example: the book "Keeping Track" is by far the most influential anti–ability grouping book. Key to its argument is a claimed finding that 90% of students can master course material under the right circumstances to argue that all students should be placed into the same courses.
Where does that footnote - footnote 7 - lead? Benjamin Bloom's "All Our Children Learning." Not to a specific page. Not to a specific note within it. The entire book.
So let's dig in! What does Bloom say?
He notes his belief that around 90% of people differ in rate of learning rather than the level of learning theoretically possible, but that it will take some students more time, effort, and help to reach that level than others (sometimes prohibitively so). Some, he'll note, might take several years on high school algebra, while others can do it in a fraction of a year.
Then he provides suggestions. How do you structure a school so that students can learn at appropriate paces to meet his "90%" goal? He has a few ideas:
1. Give each student an individual tutor.
2. Let students go at their own pace.
3. Guide students towards or away from specific courses.
4. Provide different tracks for different groups of learners.
Did you catch that?
Bloom says: obviously kids learn at different paces, so if you want them to master the material, either let them rush ahead individually or group them by ability. If we do that, everyone's level will improve.
Oakes takes that, strip-mines the entire book down to a claim she paraphrases as "under appropriate learning conditions, more than 90 percent of students can master course material," and then uses it to argue that we should not let kids rush ahead individually or group them by ability.
This book has been cited more than 10000 times. It is by far the most influential single thing ever written on ability grouping. And it cites sources it knows nobody will examine to argue for the polar opposite of what those sources advocate.
Check sources.
So excited to have won this in a @goodreads giveaway! I have loved all of @OfficiallyAlly books and am looking forward to reading this sequel to The Blonde Identity. If you haven’t already, you need to read it. Romance, mystery and humor- a great read!
