“forward-thinking teachers and school administrators across the country are creating a whole range of alternatives to cookie-cutter teaching and evaluation methods, such as the use of student portfolios and exhibitions in addition to conventional exams to assess students' progress.”
“Assessment can be either formal and/or informal measures that gather information. In education, meaningful assessment is data that guides and informs the teacher and/or stakeholders of students' abilities, strategies, performance, content knowledge, feelings and/or attitudes. Information obtained is used to make educational judgements or evaluative statements. Most useful assessment is data which is used to adjust curriculum in order to benefit the students. Assessment should be used to inform instruction. Diagnosis and assessment should document literacy in real-world contexts using data as performance indicators of students' growth and development.”
“On a certain level, homeschooling is all about socialization. Whatever the teaching methods used in school or homeschool, it is ultimately the social environment itself that distinguishes homeschooling from conventional school. This social environment includes the nature and quantity of peer interaction; parental proximity; solitude; relationships with adults, siblings, older children, younger children, and the larger community; the ways in which the children are disciplined and by whom; and even the student-teacher ratio and the overall environment where the children spend their time.”
“Teaching students the evidence for and against Darwinism is not the same as teaching intelligent design. The U.S. Congress has officially endorsed teaching students 'the full range of scientific views' about Darwinian evolution.”
“Censorship in the schools that denies intellectual freedom to teachers robs the student of that same freedom. And the freedom to learn is clearly no less precious than the freedom to teach.”
“A wise teacher learns in the midst of teaching; a wise student teaches in the midst of learning.”