Blended Restarts
There are about 10,000 really bad schools in America. The majority are elementary schools. We know how to make them better, but it takes political will and capacity to improve them. We know less about turning around bad secondary schools. The one thing wrong with them is everything. That makes…
More on the killer app question
1. Killer field trips. Imagine taking a group of kids to the mall for a field trip. What do you think they could learn? How would your answer be different if they had a smart phone application that showed them the history, economy, demographics, and engineering of the place?…
Rebooting Education: Technology & the Future of Learning
Philanthropy Roundtable held a one day conference on the Stanford campus. Here’s a summary of two interesting morning discussions Panel 1: Kid’s Eye View of Online Learning: Connie Yowell, Michael Horn, Susan Patrick Eleven year old Zach Bonner kicked off the Roundtable meeting with a tour of Florida…
Yowell & Hastings highlight Breakthru Learning @Google
Connie Yowell, MacArthur, opened day 2 of the Breakthrough Learning conference at Google with a powerful set of observations drawn from four years of grant making in youth media & learning: 1. kids (out of school) are learning, connecting, participating in new ways 2. schools are node on…
Barber on Standards: E(K+T+L)
Sir Michael Barber, architect of many of the UK education reforms of the last decade and McKinsey’s education lead, recently spoke to teachers in Singapore. Â As usual, Michael framed the situation in a unique and helpful way particularly on the aims of education. Â He described what students should know and…
Google conference, day 1
Eric Schmidt opened an education conference held at Google headquarters. He noted that kids often ahead of their teachers on the tech front and that it’s ridiculous to memorize stuff when you could ask for favorite search engine.  His hope for the conference was that we could forge a consensus…
A Parent Revolution brewing in LA
Great summary of new choice policy in this EdWeek blog. Â Here’s a portion: In what may be a first-of-its-kind reform, the nation’s second-largest…
Restarts beat turnarouns
We just don’t know how to turnaround failing schools, but we do know how to start good new schools.  We should do what we know works.  That’s the message from Andy Smarick in his important EdNext article, The Turnaround Fallacy. I’ve been involved with the development of 1200 new…
Advice to states on RttT
In general, states should use RttT as an opportunity to advance accountability, choice, and teacher/leader effectiveness (see EEP policy papers) and the innovation agenda. Â Following are thoughts on the four required categories and bonus categories. Standards & Assessments Adopt Common Core Adopt statewide guidance & college access system…
Districts should use budget woes to innovate
The National Journal asked about public-private partnerships backfilling budget cuts. Â Here’s my response. Public-private partnerships are a good idea; there should be more. Â But I hope the private partners supplanting public funds are in for the long run–I think schools in many states have a couple more years…