The Wisconsin Charter Schools Association recently highlighted the saving of a school in its monthly newsletter.
Milwaukee School Closing Creates new opportunities for students:
Editor’s note: Each Friday we feature guest bloggers that are involved in rethinking what is possible with schooling and the education system.
In a guest post for Education Innovating, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville describes the motivation behind that state’s recently-enacted Innovation Schools law, enabling districts to create schools with autonomy reflective of chartering. This significant systemic reform is similar to Boston's Pilot Schools...
The idea of organizing a 'school' as a professional partnership has now hit the national media. The New York Times had a front-page story last week about teachers in New Jersey. The Christian Science Monitor had a piece earlier about the teacher-led school...
Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post has determined that students don’t learn from school reforms.
“Few subjects inspire more intellectual dishonesty and political puffery than “school reform,’” he wrote recently.
“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren't motivated, even capable teachers may fail.”
Motivation is weak, he argues, because...
If learning ultimately depends upon effort put forth by students, then the motivation of a student is central. The Hope Survey is a different way of looking at assessment. It measures student perceptions of autonomy, belonging, and goal orientation—seeking to diagnose whether a school culture has the components that encourage higher levels of engagement in learning.
Yet research shows engagement and motivation decreases as students progress through...
Editor’s note: Each Friday we feature guest bloggers that are involved in rethinking what is possible with schooling and the education system.
Fraser Speirs is a software developer and teaches computing at Cedars School of Excellence, an ‘independent’ (non-publicly funded) all ages school in the UK. He maintains a blog and recently wrote about bringing iPads into...
Critics have descended on the "Investing in Innovation" ("i3") program of the U.S. Department of Education. Most argue it's financing not innovation but the replication of old innovations. In a talk August 3 to the Knowledge Alliance, E|E's Ted Kolderie explained why 'continuous improvement' alone is unsound policy; why sound policy does require true innovation – followed, of course, by “improvement”.
The LA Times story evaluating teacher performance has reignited debate about whether testing students is a suitable way to measure teacher success. NPR has covered it extensively, as have most major periodicals. As the debate rages, prominent researchers have stepped out to...
Editor’s note: Each Friday we feature guest bloggers that are involved in rethinking what is possible with schooling and the education system.
Will Fowler is program director at the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco (AFSF). In this guest post he describes how a partnership between AFSF and San Francisco Unified School District to create opportunities to engage students, and to allow them to demonstrate expanded forms of achievement.
In 2004, The Architectural Foundation of San Francisco...
Earlier this month Tom Vander Ark of EdReformer argued the iPad will bring more innovation than the i3 grant program, and there has been much talk about their potential for learning.
Now Chicago Public Schools is beginning to move on use of the iPad,...
