The Education Evolving Blog

In this budget climate the four-day school week is hot. Districts across the country are moving to it, in an attempt to cut costs. Instead of rethinking school, the four-day week represents a simple continuation of the squeezing of the five-day week. It is not strategic, and in fact decreases productivity - the worst possible outcome.

Yet the onset of the four-day week may have an entirely different effect, releasing students from 20 percent of their obligatory time to instead pursue learning in other areas.

During this Great Recession a system that was already being squeezed is following the instinct of centrally-managed systems to harden. This may be the precise wrong thing to do. In this post a teacher-manager of a school argues more discretion should be given to the ‘users’ of the system to figure out how to best meet learning goals with the resources available.

One effect of the recent stimulus-bill funding for K-12 has been to create an impression that schools are suffering today because of the economic down turn. This is true. But the downturn is not the sole reason for their financial pains…nor is it the principal reason.

Three winners of Education Innovating blog-post contest are announced, and receive a copy of Clayton Christensen's Disrupting Class.