Personalized Learning

How Students Show What They Know

My wife appreciates psychodrama (today we’ll see another triumphant women in a Nancy Meyer movie).  I, on the other hand, enjoy a juicy psychometric-drama.  And we have a thriller in the making.  A couple agreements in the next few weeks will set the stage for the next decade of testing…

Personalized Learning

The Edu-Entrepreneurs bargain

The sun set at 4:22pm at latitude 47.3.  It will set about a minute later tomorrow.  The days are finally getting longer again. We also turned the corner on the Great Recession; at least the leading indicators look that way. That is little reassurance to the 20% of the…

Personalized Learning

How teacher pay should work

Kim Marshall’s December 16 EdWeek commentary attempts to “demolish the argument for individual merit pay.”  He makes good points that suggest that individual bonuses based solely on value-added test scores are not a good idea.  He suggests, instead, team-based bonuses and more pay for master teachers. There’s an…

Personalized Learning

Why all students have access to online learning

Rereading iNACOL policy report that suggests six reasons to close the online learning deal in the handful of states still prohibiting the internet (at least for learning): Public and available Academically and demographically blind: flexible and accessible for all students Engaging: often more engaging than traditional courses (and it…

Personalized Learning

Fix or replace Dropout Factories

EdWeek ran a useful commentary by friends from JFF and Johns Hopkins that outlined the range of challenges faced by states in fixing the roughly 2,000 high schools with graduation rates below 60%.  Like the authors, I appreciate Secretary Duncan’s laser focus on attacking chronic failure–something NCLB…

Personalized Learning

7 charter authorizing strategies for scale & quality

I forgot an important 6th charter authorizing path that will continue to grow in importance–conversions.  With budget cuts and dysfunctional districts, more public schools are contemplating charter conversion.  To guard against ‘take the money and run’ (previously common in GA and elsewhere) where schools become charter in name only, a…

Personalized Learning

Parent Trigger back from grave in CA

The Parent Trigger–the power to for a majority of parents to choose the best option for their kids–was dead last week.  It was given new life by the CA senate today by a one vote majority.  It faces an uphill battle in the Assembly where a member said, “This is…

Personalized Learning

The Great Inflection & what it means for Edu-Philanthropy

We’re at a turning point. Thirty years ago, Fritjof Capra, who paved the systems thinking pathway for Senge and Wheatley, warned that mankind always sees itself at a turning point. But this time it’s really true. Expanded access to broadband, cheap…

Personalized Learning

RttT has already had biggest impact of any grant program

Race to the Top strikes again!  The mother of all grant programs has produced more reform than any grant program in history.  And the feds haven’t spent a dime yet.  Three quarters of the states have indicated that they’ll be applying for phase 1 grants in January and most have…

Personalized Learning

5 charter authorizing strategies to max RttT

It’s time to rethink charter school authorization.  There are 5,000 charter schools in the US (about 5% of the total number of schools) and a push from the Department of Education for more.  Given that half of the charters aren’t any better than traditional public schools, there has been a push…