Choosing Blindly
How can we tolerate ignorance on something that is as critical to student learning as instructional materials?
Teaching the Teachers
Achievement Network offers support for data-driven instruction
Achievement Network offers support for data-driven instruction
Dumbing Down the GPA: It’s the Unsophisticated Bright Kid who Suffers
It is not the under-achieving students in urban centers who perpetuate the ongoing crisis in American education. They are simply doing their best to survive the challenges of family, neighborhood and circumstance. The threats come from the mindless educational potentates who have captured control of the best public schools in the country.
Do Schools Begin Too Early?
The effect of start times on student achievement
The effect of start times on student achievement
Great Teaching
Measuring its effects on students' future earnings
Measuring its effects on students’ future earnings
Implications for Policy Are Not So Clear
Commentary on “Great Teaching:Measuring its effects on students’ future earnings” By Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman and Jonah E. Rockoff Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff have carried out a remarkable study, but I suspect it will be misinterpreted. The main contribution of their research is quantifying the importance of teaching. Specifically, the authors [...]
Profound Implications for State Policy
If we are truly serious about improving student learning, we must think anew about teacher recruitment, placement, evaluation, professional development, retention, and separation.
More Evidence Would Be Welcome
Commentary on “Great Teaching:Measuring its effects on students’ future earnings” By Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman and Jonah E. Rockoff The new study by Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff asks whether high-value-added teachers (i.e., teachers who raise student test scores) also have positive longer-term impacts on students, as reflected in college attendance, earnings, [...]
Low-Performing Teachers Have High Costs
Chetty et al.’s evidence shows that bad teachers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income and productivity each year that they remain in the classroom. These costs are large enough that failing to address them is simply inexcusable.
When Education Reform Gets Personal
Confessions of a policy-wonk father
Confessions of a policy-wonk father
What We’re Watching: The 26-Ingredient School Lunch Burger
NPR’s Tiny Desk Kitchen series looks at the surprising ingredients that go into a hamburger served in a school cafeteria.
What We’re Watching: Education Reform for the Digital Era
John Chubb, Bryan Hassel, Mark Bauerlein, Eleanor Laurans, and Mike Petrilli discuss whether digital learning is education’s latest fad or its future at a Fordham Institute event held last week.
What We’re Watching: Education Reform for the Digital Era
On Thursday, April 19 from 9:00-10:30 am we’ll be watching a live webcast of the Fordham Institute’s webinar event on digital learning.
What We’re Watching: Short Circuited
The benefits and challenges of bringing online learning into California classrooms are explored in this video from the Pacific Research Institute.
The Fate of the Common Core: The View from 2022
The Core is still with us, of course, but it remains a shadow of what its more optimistic proponents envisioned a decade ago.
What We’re Watching: The Chicago VIVA Project
In Chicago, individual teachers are working with policymakers to figure out how to use a longer school day to improve student learning.
What We’re Watching: Teacher Test Scores Go Public
Eric Hanushek talks with the Wall Street Journal about why teachers’ value-added scores should be made public.
Bright Spots Shine in Blended, Online Learning
A month has passed since the first-ever national Digital Learning Day. Given the excitement generated from teachers and others tuning in to the National Town Hall meeting and given today’s National Leadership Summit on Online Learning up on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. that iNACOL sponsored, I thought it was worth noting some great examples that weren’t highlighted during the day’s festivities.
Special Choices
Do voucher schools serve students with disabilities?
Do voucher schools serve students with disabilities?
The Common Core Math Standards
Are they a step forward or backward?
Are they a step forward or backward?
Hyper Hype
Will digital learning be killed by kindness?
Will digital learning be killed by kindness?
The Middle School Plunge
Achievement tumbles when young students change schools
Achievement tumbles when young students change schools
In the Digital World, Every District Can Compete with Every Other
In Utah, new legislation has given school districts the opportunity to attract high school students from throughout the state to their online course offerings.
Digital Textbooks, OER, and More from Digital Learning Day
What’s most important to understand about the digital textbook effort is that it’s an opportunity to open up a large amount of existing public money that has been locked into use by a very small and closed set of publishers.
Putting the Schools in Charge
An entrepreneur’s vision for a more responsive education system
An entrepreneur’s vision for a more responsive education system
