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Video: Clayton Christensen presents Disrupting Class to Education Commission of the States

Clayton Christensen, business professor at Harvard Business School, says: Improvement requires states to make room for disruptive innovation in public education.

The Other Half of the Strategy: Following Up on System Reform by Innovating with School and Schooling. (pdf)

System-level reforms like standards, accountability, choice and chartering make it more necessary and more possible for schools to succeed with learning. But these reforms do not by themselves affect achievement. Kids learn from what they read, see, hear and do. So success in the effort at improvement requires capitalizing now on the system-level changes with a major effort to create new forms of school and schooling. Those who prefer conventional school should be able to stay with conventional school. But the traditional must not suppress the innovative. The strategy beyond NCLB should be such a 'split screen' strategy, transforming K-12 gradually as new models gradually replace the old models of school.

Tech-savvy students stuck in text-dominated schools: A summary of available research on student attitudes, perceptions, and behavior. (pdf)

"Tech Savvy..." summarizes available literature reporting student attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors when it comes to using digital technology, particularly for learning. The report describes our nation's increasingly tech-savvy students and the various ways in which they use computers and the Internet. It outlines students' frustrations with our still-text-dominated schools. Students suggest how education policy and school designers could better meet their needs.

Creating the Capacity for Change. (pdf)

Ted Kolderie's book expands the 'theory of action' for state policy leadership... explains why governors' and legislatures' effort to open a new-schools sector is imperative for public education, to enable it to do the job it has now been given to do. To view the first chapter, click the caption above. To order the book from the publisher, Education Week Press, click here.

Is it time to reconsider the notion of 'adolescence'? (pdf)

Not too long ago, one former state commissioner says, our high schools were filled with children. Today they are filled with young people who are essentially adults—being treated still as children. Is it time now to move young people more into adult roles by age 16. If we did, what would that suggest for K-12?

Response to Intervention: An Alternative to Traditional Eligibility Criteria for Students with Disabilities. (pdf)

This report describes and provides a review of the research on an alternative learning model called Response to Intervention (RTI). Under this model, student performance data are gathered frequently and are immediately available to teachers, psychologists and others. The data are then available to help evaluate that effectiveness of the instruction strategies being used and, when warranted, spur modifications in teaching and learning models that can produce better results.

Education|Evolving