Posts by Tom Vander Ark
No excuse for sucky items
This country is stuck in a psychometric box based on a history of data poverty. Cisco's John Behrens developed an assessment system that is rigorous, scalable, and available on demand. K-12 should take note.
How to shift kid's media time to learning?
Three strategies to shift a portion of the time young people spend on entertainment/media to productive learning activities
The Cost-Comparability Conundrum
We’re stuck and $365 million may not help. The United States places an unusual degree of importance on the reliability of yearend standardized tests. These tests have been around for 15 years and, because we have so little performance data, we try to use them for a variety of purposes. …
Parents Promote Disruptive Innovation
Michael Horn spoke to the National Coalition Public School Options--an extraordinary network of parents that advocate for educational options for families particularly online learning.
Good Work: Republican or Democrat?
Justice and mercy: it is never easy to find the right balance at school, at work, in politics, or at home. Solutions are found in broadly sustained conversations about creating forward-focused environments of opportunity that value performance but provide and support multiple paths to achievement.
Solutions to Charter Bottlenecks
The number of charter schools continues to expand nationally by about 500 school per year, but growth rates have been dampened by school district push back and the fiscal crisis.
5 Market Drivers & 5 Market Shapers
Private enterprise will play a critical role in producing and scaling learning innovations that will help boost US achievement levels and reach the next billion young people worldwide. Here's 5 drivers and 5 shaping forces.
Motivational Profiles
Mining the combined data from home and school will yield rich and powerful motivational profiles that will power smart recommendation engines--and that's when we'll see the real power of customized learning.
County Superintendents Consider Innovation
ASA County Superintendents meeting in Washington DC was sponsored by the Pearson Foundation. They considered learning tech and school improvement today.
SETDA Outlines State of Online Assessment
The State EdTech Directors issued a white paper outlining the current state of online assessment. The report makes 9 recommendations about moving forward.