In case you haven’t heard… the K12 Online Conference is about to start. If you haven’t yet carved out a huge block of time to take part, do so.

Every now and then, in the teaching life, we get lucky and former students let us know that we mattered… I got an email today from a former student — not one I’d kept in touch with, but one who was a great, fun student in class. She used to make my classes more fun because of her intelligence and energy and willingness to take risks. Here’s a piece of the email.

Coming to [college] has made me realize how very few good teachers there are in the world. Thank you for being one of them, although now you’re a principal…hopefully helping to make more of them.

I’ve been living in the life of the mind a lot this summer, thinking about a lot of the abstract parts of school design and teaching and learning, and as we start a new school year, and as we talk so much about reinventing school and curriculum design and 21st century learning, it’s important to remember this — The success of what we do is measured by the difference we make in the lives of the students in our charge. It starts with the care we show them. It starts with the joy with model for them. It starts with the relationships we develop with them.

And, as the new school year starts, as we all get back to working with our students, let’s remember that every now and then, we get lucky and students tell us what we mean to them… but even if we don’t. My hope for all of us this year, as we deal with the stumbling blocks and craziness and frustration and exhaustion that comes with teaching is that we all remember this:

We are the lucky ones. We get to teach.

Charles Murray — yes, he of the Bell Curve — has said the time has come to abolish the SAT. His recent article in The American is the focus of a NY Times Blog piece entitled "Death to the SAT." Murray writes:

The evidence has become overwhelming that the SAT no longer serves a democratizing purpose. Worse, events have conspired to make the SAT a negative force in American life. And so I find myself arguing that the SAT should be ended. Not just deemphasized, but no longer administered. Nothing important would be lost by so doing. Much would be gained.

The Times blog piece is a quick summary of the longer piece in The American. It’s a fascinating read, arguing that while the SAT once leveled the playing field, it is now simply a measure of socio-economic status, not of aptitude.

We are living in fascinating — if disturbing educational times, but you have to think that when you have conservatives like Charles Murray and liberal / progressives like Monty Neill lining up on the same side of a growing anti-testing movement, we may be headed for a change in the way we think about education in America.