Reasoned and Reasonable

Start Here!  This is the home page that can link you to many of the resources you will want to explore as a teacher.  If you are a student you will also find a link to Blackboard resources in the "Course Information" title to the left.

Here is support and supplemental readings for my book "Successful Teaching the Elementary Classroom."  The bottom link will take you back to the main resource page.  You will want to explore that page as time permits.  But now, let's move along to other teacher resources.

This is another section of the site Reasoned and Reasonable.  This page focuses on teacher resources.  Follow the trail to see the resource possibilities for children that you can create to support classroom learning.

This site was a virtual university for fifth grade children as part of a study on the web and research.  Each site listed is developed for children and is appropriate to their reading and comprehension levels.  After visiting the sites, the student can click on the final site and take a short quiz.  The student can go back to the site at any time.  After the student figures out the answers, an email is sent to me and I return email them a image of a University of Noggin Flea showing the name and date.  Notice that the items require inferential thinking as well as facts.

Both undergraduate and graduate work should provide you with preparation to understand the use of basic statistics applied to educational problems.  Here are online texts that can help you review your basic knowledge on statistics in the social sciences.  Let's visit a site where you can use those skills profitably.

This is the NCES (usual called CES but the name changes with each presidential administration!).  These statistics are usually, but not always, the more reliable source of information.  Often it is the only source.  Recent administrations have put "spin" on the process, outcomes, and reporting so these statistics can't be viewed as independent.   However, it is THE source for more data than other sites.

Surfing the CES is fun and rather easy.  Using the search engine in the top right of the web page is probably the simplest method of locating information.  However, surfing around the various links is essential to learn what is actually contained.  Most reports have more than one version so you generally will want the "executive report" or the summary prior to reading any report in its entirety.  This page is a "quick facts" page and regular surfing here will greatly add to your understanding and basic knowledge of Education in America.

While most teachers do not know it, President Clinton sign an executive order over a decade ago requiring EACH department of the government to develop a corresponding web program for children.  This is CES's site for children and it a good starting point for many classroom lessons or individual research journeys.  NEVER FORGET that EVERY DEPARTMENT has a children's component.  The next is one of my favorites...

Pigeons have been used for espionage for many centuries.  The CIA uses many animals in it work in gather information  in other countries.  Take a look at the aerial reconnaissance photographs pigeon took a hundred years ago.  They were used to photograph battle zones in World War I.  However, it is time to get back to more serious educational research.

Scroll down a bit to the topic titled "Key Findings."  As noted, schools are not perfect but are not dangerous and are getting safer.  In facts, if you read the entire 50 years or so of statistics on violence in schools, school shave never been safer.  The overwhelming crime in schools is theft.  Noticed that some statistics do not separate serious from petty crimes.  This illustrates that one should never rely on a single statistic or even a single source of statistics.  Incidentally,  a lot depends on the method of data collection.  In any case, this quick fact illustrates the wealth of data available that can be used to obtain a much more accurate depiction of schools than personal experience or information from the media.