Word: kohn
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Indeed, criticizing the states and testing firms charged with carrying out the federal law ignores a far more crucial issue: whether standardized tests can ever really drive high-quality education. Says author and well-known standardized test skeptic Alfie Kohn: "These recent problems with implementation pale beside the appalling effects of NCLB itself. It's when this law is working 'properly' - with all the tests given, the numbers obediently reported, and the attendant punitive consequences enforced - that we really need to worry." Montana may not be sweating out its scores; last year, 92% of its schools made adequate yearly progress...
...Already the carefree August nights have given way to meaningful conversations (a.k.a. nagging) about the summer reading that didn't get done. So what could be more welcome than two new books assailing this bane of modern family life: The Homework Myth (Da Capo Press; 243 pages), by Alfie Kohn, the prolific, perpetual critic of today's test-driven schools, and The Case Against Homework (Crown; 290 pages), a cri de coeur by two moms, lawyer Sara Bennett and journalist Nancy Kalish...
...homework. Educators, including Cooper, tend to defend homework by saying it builds study habits, self-discipline and time-management skills. But there's also evidence that homework sours kids' attitudes toward school. "It's one thing to say we are wasting kids' time and straining parent-kid relationships," Kohn told me, "but what's unforgivable is if homework is damaging our kids' interest in learning, undermining their curiosity...
...Kohn's solution is radical: he wants a no-homework policy to become the default, with exceptions for tasks like interviewing parents on family history, kitchen chemistry and family reading...
...shrewd killer in Ripley's Game, But it was perhaps the least known film of all, the coming-of-age comedy Somebodies, that sent this crowd - a mix of local residents, visiting Ebert fans and industry VIPs - into hysterics. A low-budget digital comedy produced by festival director Nate Kohn and filmed in Georgia, where Kohn teaches film, the film was written by one his students. Three months after it had its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, Ebert introduced Somebodies to his Overlooked audience as an affectionate film that liberates its characters from the stereotypes of most mainstream stories...