Tom Vander Ark’s recent post in his Education Week blog on innovation is all about the shifting landscape of education in Minnesota. In his blog entry, Vander Ark surveys the advocacy and policy groups working in the state, and even pokes fun at the frigid Minnesota weather (easy for him to say from Phoenix!). Below are his remarks on Education Evolving.
The most interesting national voice is the...
I made a few possibly provocative observations and suggestions about the 'How' of innovation when talking in Nashville February 6 to the heads of the state charter-school associations and support organizations.
Listen to a short excerpt (about 5 minutes):
Click here to play
In brief, what I said was:
Amidst a chorus of governors ramping up efforts to fix K-12 by controlling teachers, California Governor Jerry Brown sang a different song in his January State of the State Address:
The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to...
This post was originally blogged on the Education Week Of, By, For blog.
In the introductory chapter of A Year at Mission Hill, the teachers unassumingly drop a bombshell. They attribute their school's sustained success to a democratic governance structure in which teachers have "freedom and autonomy." Not just classroom autonomy, but the authority to collectively make decisions that influence whole school...