Posted by: Dean Fink Posted on: May 16, 2001 at 1:48 PM Message: Wow Linda! What an extensive and exciting project. The fact that in these changing times you are still in business speaks to the sustainability of your work. You seem to have more success than most similar projects. Your focus on developing and maintaining a 'critical mass' of leaders seems to be a key strategy. I'm interested in how you 'managed meaning' with so many people. "Standards based teaching" and learning mean many things to many people. In many jusrisdictions it means getting good results on decontextualized tests e.g. Iowa Test of Basic Skills. How do you balance 'sense aming, using kids ideas, inquiry based teaching and the need for answers or are you among the lucky jurisdictions that hasn't fallen prey to the test plague. Standards based teaching has seemed to narrow purposes to what is testable. As an observer it seems to me that standards based -inquiry learning is an oxymoron. Is it?

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• oxymoron - Linda Gregg