Philippine Basic Education

“Ang dignidad ay hindi lamang nasusukat sa pera. Higit pa rinto, ang dignidad ay ang pagkakaroon ng sinseridad sa paglilingkod.” -DepEd Secretary Luistro The head of the Department of Education in the Philippines said the above during a meeting with representatives of the Teachers' Dignity Coalition (Source:  http://teachersdignitycoalition.weebly.com/ ). "Dignity is not measured solely by money. More than this, dignity is having sincerity in service." I think everyone believes or hopes that instructors choose the teaching profession not because of its perceived monetary benefits. Teachers enter the teaching profession knowing quite well what it entails. Teaching is not just a job that pays. Like any undertaking, there is input from the person doing the job. A teacher invests time and effort into teaching. As in other endeavors, an individual can weigh at the end of the exercise if the results are worth the investment made.  Architects design. Doctors cure patients...

The Department of Education in the United States created in 2002 the  What Works Clearinghouse  with the goal of providing a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education. What Works Clearinghouse has been producing practice guides which are quite similar in purpose to evidence based advice provided to health care practitioners. These are intended to disseminate the best available evidence and expertise to address problems in education. One example is the practice guide with the cover page shown below: Downloaded from  http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/practice_guides/Turnaround_pg_04181.pdf Herman, R., Dawson, P., Dee, T., Greene, J., Maynard, R., Redding, S., and Darwin, M. (2008). Turning Around Chronically Low-Performing Schools: A practice guide (NCEE #2008- 4020). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved ...

Annie Murphy Paul recently wrote an article in the New York Times (NYT) entitled " The Machines are Taking Over ". The article talked about the works of a husband and wife team, Neil Heffernan, a professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Cristina Lindquist Heffernan, a mathematics middle school teacher. Their program called Assistments is an online tutoring platform that provides immediate feedback to teachers, students and school administrators. Video introducing the Assistments online tutoring program Paul's NYT article starts with the time when Neil and Cristina were just engaged. Neil was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon studying ways in which software could be used to help students while Cristina was a successful math tutor. Neil recorded Cristina's interactions with students in order to distill just makes a teacher a good teacher. Paul shared the following from Neil's notes: "As the session continued, Lindquist ...

It was during the summer months of 1980. I found myself in a brand new setting. I was selected to participate in the Ateneo Junior Summer Seminar program. It was an opportunity for a rising senior in high school to spend the summer in the Loyola campus. It was a taste of Ateneo education. Ateneo was a very beautiful campus. At one vantage point, I could see the Marikina valley below. The Last Time I visited Ateneo was in 2008  I was among the very few lucky students coming from a public high school. Most of my classmates came from the elite schools in the country. It was an eye-opener. Senator Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III was among the students in the program. And the current president of Ateneo, Fr. Jett Villarin was one of the instructors. Being among the top students in your high school class, excelling in the entrance exam, and doing well in an interview were the steps necessary to be invited to the program. In this program, I met the top students from the Ateneo cam...

Source:  http://kabataanpartylist.com/blog/sell-out-the-philippine-education-system-three-decades-after-the-passage-of-the-education-act-of-1982/ The vestiges of a bygone era have now come to haunt us. This day marks the 30th anniversary of the passage of Batas Pambansa (BP) Blg. 232, more popularly known as the Education Act of 1982, signed into law by then President Ferdinand Marcos on September 11, 1982. This seminal law governs both formal and nonformal education systems in public and private schools in all levels of instruction in the country. With the lifting of Martial Law, then President Marcos needed a law that would circumscribe all his past decrees pertaining to education, all the while agreeing to recommendations of various financial institutions, particularly the World Bank, so as to usher in more foreign debt. The Education Act of 1982 is the embodiment of Marcos’ blatant maneuvering– a powerful law that reoriented the Philippines’ education system in the gui...

LynNell Hancock writes in "Why are Finland's Schools Successful?": "There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions." Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html On the other hand, teachers in the Philippines have just received " Guidelines on the selection of honor pupils and students of grades 1 to 10 of the K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum ". The guidelines are quite specific (to three decimal places) with regard to how to use grades and activities in ranking the students. The following are snapshots from the memo: To this, it maybe worthwhile to reiterate what Hank Pellissier wrote in GreatSchools.org :  " Finland downplays educational competition  in a number of ways. Schools aren't rank...

One can find quite a number of scientific studies on how poverty affects learning. Take this one from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for example ( http://www.pnas.org/content/106/16/6545.long ): Childhood poverty, chronic stress, and adult working memory Gary W. Evans , 1  and  Michelle A. Schamberg + Author Affiliations Departments of Design and Environmental Analysis and Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-4401 Edited by Bruce S. McEwen, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, and approved February 24, 2009 (received for review November 22, 2008) Next Section Abstract The income–achievement gap is a formidable societal problem, but little is known about either neurocognitive or biological mechanisms that might account for income-related deficits in academic achievement. We show that childhood poverty is inversely related to working memory in young adults. Furthermore, this prospective relationship is...