A new report by LFA and Grunwald Associates, with support from AT&T, examines how parents perceive the value of mobile devices, how they see their children using mobiles, and what they think of the possibilities for mobile learning.
Equity
Blog Entries
About six years ago, the superintendent of the Gainesville City School System (GA) told elementary educators to start dreaming: he wanted them to create their ideal learning and teaching environments. Each of the district's elementary schools would open with a unique focus, to be determined by the people who would work in them.
After extensive research, Principal Jill Goforth and other Gainesville educators decided to embrace the Core Knowledge Foundation's approach to education-an approach that emphasizes a rigorous, content-focused curriculum to help all students establish a strong foundation of knowledge that they can build on later in school and life. ...
Charles Murray is apparently at it again in his forthcoming book, Real Education.
Murray's 1994 book, The Bell Curve, infamously argued that demography is destiny. It held that members of certain racial and socioeconomic groups are poor because they're not smart enough to be otherwise. Real Education apparently applies this objectionable principle to education, with the expected results.
If the book excerpts in the Wall Street Journal are any indication, the book will argue that low-performing students lack the intelligence to perform well. It will counsel schools to put these students out of their academic misery by tracking them into less intellectually-ambitious, more strictly vocational courses. ...
A number of blogs have recently picked up the trailer for Whatever it Takes, a documentary about a high-performing urban school in the Bronx. If the 10-minute trailer is any indication, the film will be powerful and inspiring. Still, like many fictional or documentary films that celebrate a set of heroic students and educators working against all odds, the film raises some important questions.
For one, we should be careful not to absolve entire systems--school systems, communities, voters and policymakers--of their shared responsibility towards the nation's most vulnerable children. After all, it takes systemic solutions--advanced through collaboration among leaders, front-line educators, communities and, yes, policymakers--to spread the wealth beyond disconnected islands of excellence. (Indeed, the Learning First Alliance report Beyond Islands of Excellence focuses on lessons on systemic improvement drawn from five successful districts.) ...
Education Week reported yesterday that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is mounting a new effort to increase the number of Board-certified teachers in hard-to-staff schools. (See the National Board's website for more information on this initiative.)
The National Board recognizes teachers who successfully complete its process of "intensive study, expert evaluation, self-assessment and peer review." It has long acknowledged that only a minority of the teachers they certify work in the schools that need them most. According to recent research, Board certification raises student performance. In light of this evidence, the National Board's renewed focus on hard-to-staff schools is heartening.
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It appears that a phony debate continues to rage over whether schools alone or out-of-school social programs alone can close achievement gaps between poor and wealthy students. Provoked by the "Broader, Bolder Approach to Education," an important statement calling for both in-school
and out-of-school interventions to boost student achievement, the debate is distracting us from constructive deliberation about what it will take to support all students' achievement.
Of course schools can and should make a profound difference in the lives--and academic achievement--of our most vulnerable students. Indeed, that's a major premise of this website, which highlights the success of public schools and districts across the country, many against sobering odds. Let's be clear: It serves no one well--least of all educators--to depict public schools as powerless and educators' dedication as wasted. Defeatism has no place in discussions of school reform. ...
Last week, we interviewed Paul Houston, who recently retired from his 14-year position at the helm of AASA, about his legacy as an educator and his thoughts on the current state of education reform.
This week, we turn our attention to another education leader who is reflecting on a long and distinguished career: Warlene Gary, who in late June retired from her position as executive director of the national PTA.
In our exclusive interview, Gary speaks about what she has accomplished in her 35-year career, her commitment to equity, her efforts at the PTA to reach out to poor communities and communities of color, and her frustration with the "paralysis of analysis" that hamstrings so many education reform discussions in Washington, DC. ...
The recent flurry of reports and manifestos urging a more constructive federal role in K-12 education are bringing an important issue back into the policy limelight: the fact that the nation's poorest, most vulnerable students are least likely to attend schools with fully qualified staff members.
This renewed focus is long overdue. Unequal access to the most effective teachers and other school staff remains one of the most shocking inequities in the education system. Federal leadership in closing the staffing gaps would be welcome, indeed. ...
The NEA has just released a major new paper on the federal role in education entitled Great Public Schools for Every Student by 2020.
In doing so, they join a number of other groups that have deemed it high time to clarify the federal role after seven years of NCLB--and before a new administration arrives in January. (See, for example, the recent report by the Forum for Education and Democracy and the even more recent statement released by a distiguished task force calling for a "Broader, Bolder Approach to Education.")
NEA's report begins with the premise that NCLB has thrown the federal role out of whack, creating "top-down, command-and-control, federally prescriptive testing and accountability mandates" that have narrowed curricula, robbed assessment of its power as an instructional tool and failed to close achievement gaps.
With the aim of ensuring universal access to great public schools by 2020, the NEA document outlines six priorities for federal involvement in education: ...
Over the past few weeks, Public School Insights has been interviewing signers of a recent statement calling for a "Broader, Bolder Approach to Education"--an approach that combines ambitious school improvement strategies with out-of-school supports for student achievement--such as early childhood education, after-school programs, and health services for children.
A few days ago, we had the privilege of interviewing Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman, a signer whose recent work on topics such as graduation rates and the benefits of early childhood education has attracted close attention from education advocates. ...
Currently a professor of practice at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, Tom Payzant has been around the educational block. He has served as an Assistant Secretary of Education under President Clinton, and as superintendent of schools in Boston, San Diego, Oklahoma City, Eugene (Oregon), and Springfield (Pennsylvania). In Boston, he was credited with narrowing achievement gaps and presiding over the largest improvement in mathematics scores of any major urban district participating in the National Assessment of Education Progress Trial Urban District Assessment. He has received many leadership awards, including Massachusetts Superintendent of the Year, and published extensively, promoting academic reforms to both professional educators and policymakers. Recently, he also served as co-chair of the task force that released a statement promoting "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education." ...
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