Jobs: east coast principals, west coast biz dev
Revolution portfolio companies adding positions: 1. Director of Market Development for edu-web 2.0 Bay Area start up Company Description: Founded by key talent from leading social networking, digital content, and education management organizations, this new Bay Area company is developing…
High School Student's Bill of Rights
1. Every student should have an advocate at school, one person who shares responsibility with that student for navigating high school and who knows the student’s goals and aspirations . 2. Every student should have qualified teachers who have responsibility for no more than 80 other…
Brooks Suggests Education Course of Action
David Brooks is, at least for me, the great explainer of our times. Fareed Zakaria helps me understand the world. Brooks helps me understand America. For someone particularly interested in education and its role in our society and economy, I’m trying to figure out whether…
Best & worst of school from DH Lawrence
Lawrence learned first hand of the joys and frustrations of teaching in a school for boys. These two poems capture the best and worst of teaching—the trill of watching the light bulbs go off and the frustration of the questioned pursuit. I saw a good deal of both…
Pearson bets on India and online learning
A couple business transactions announced this week are indicative of three important trends in learning: 1. The shift from print to personal digital services 2. The rise in direct-to-consumer learning services, and 3. The growing interest in and relative health of education investment in India…
Choice for equity
Education is political—especially in America. We argue about ends (standards), means (pedagogy), how students show what they know (assessment), scope (e.g., food, sex ed, services), funding, employment, governance, and accountability. Some use a Horace Mann ‘education for democracy’ argument to justify a vision of a ‘Common…
Better organized free stuff
It’s quite phenomenal how many edu-blogs, tweeters, sites, and networks are emerging. Just a few years ago we had to rely on our weekly fix from EdWeek and now our inboxes and twitter boxes are full of news and views—a storm of info. Perhaps next gen tools like…
Dropouts: Attitudes and Antidotes
I have to admit that I didn’t fully appreciate the dropout crisis while a serving as a public school superintendent. While budgeting for my third year, I recall asking why there were fewer students in each class from 9 to 12—the drop off seemed to be higher than…
Innovating or incrementing?
The NYTimes asks Can governments till the fields of innovation? The story profiles John Kao who recently launched The Institute for Large Scale Innovation (ILSI) founded to address three key questions: · How can innovation be fostered most effectively at a societal level (country,…
June is the new Friday
Most PR specialists tell you to drop bad news on Friday. Maybe the same is true for end of the school year. We’ve certainly had bad news this month. Diploma Counts 2009, the annual EdWeek graduation rate study commissioned by the Gates Foundation, said “ While long-term trends have…