EdTech
Personalized Learning
Why Great Teachers Matter to Low Income Students
"Consider the recent national math scores of fourth- and eighth-graders, which show startling differences among results for low-income African American students in different cities. In Boston, Charlotte, New York and Houston, these fourth-graders scored 20 to 30 points higher than students in the same socioeconomic group in Detroit, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and the District of Columbia. Boston fourth-graders outscored those in Detroit by 33 points. Ten points approximates one year’s worth of learning on these national tests, which means that by fourth grade, poor African American children in Detroit are already three grades behind their peers in Boston."
Personalized Learning
Making Data Matter
Interesting day at the EdWeek Leader’s Forum on Making Data Matter.  Dan Katzir, Broad, did a great job kicking off the event with lessons learned over 10 years.  Amiee Guidera did a great job outlining the Data Quality Campaign agenda. It was disappointing only 6% of the participants responded…
Personalized Learning
i3 Reviews
Had five conversations about i3 in the last 24 hours: Three focused on applicant eligibility. There is a very high bar for applicants. Read this section carefully. It requires a very strong track record of student achievement with a couple exceptions for nonprofits producing results leading to achievement. Don’t apply…
Personalized Learning
Read Friedman on Start Ups
Please read Tom Friedman’s post on start ups.  Here’s the most important sentences: Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts. They come from start-ups. And where do start-ups come from? They come from smart, creative, inspired risk-takers. How do we get more of those? There are only two…
Personalized Learning
Step Function Improvement
As the learning revolution matures, it is likely to be turbocharged by lessons about the neuropsychology of learning and motivation.  I don’t think we know much about this and don’t use what we know very effectively, but we are likely to learn far more than we know in the coming decade.
Personalized Learning
The 3×5 Learning Revolution
Twenty years after technology began transforming every other sector, there is finally enough movement on a sufficient number of fronts—15 to be precise—that, despite resilience, everything will change.  New and better learning options are inevitable, but progress will be uneven by state/country and leadership dependent. The 5 Drivers.
EdTech
Entrepreneur Thinking: What It Is, What It Ain't
My superintendent in the East Village apartment I rent would like me to believe that his solution for the cracks around the somewhat faulty plumbing in my bathroom ceiling and wall is entrepreneurial in its deployment and conceptualization. It most certainly is not. It is not Entrepreneur Thinking to “patch”…
EdTech
Rodel-Backed Plan Wins in DE
There were lots of people scratching their head about Delaware’s phase one Race to the Top win yesterday. Â It was not a last minute consultant generated application, it was the result of a decade of leadership from the Rodel Foundation–one guy that leveraged a small checkbook and a lot of…
EdTech
The Book is an Artifact
Those of you in the education innovation space will know what I am talking about when I say that the era of the book has come and gone. The book is an artifact. It’s a holdover from an era where knowledge was plentiful (relatively) but access to knowledge was limited.
Personalized Learning
RttT: The Work Ahead
With only two winners (thanks for holding the bar high Arne), there are two different paths to resubmission: 1. Support. FL & LA clearly had the most aggressive plans but got dinged for lack of support. Â They need a little Barb O’Brien (Lt. Gov CO) style barnstorming to build…