EdTech
ACTE Creates Outline for "Career Ready"
The Association for Career and Technical Education released a paper today that delineates their ideas on what students need to be career ready.
Flipping Florida: The New Employment Bargain
The only thing at stake is the future of American. Two big dramas involving teachers and testing are at play in education. My last post discussed the $350m federal grant program that is likely to lock in another decade of bubble sheet tests rather than a forward leaning framework open to the flood of keystroke data telling us more than we ever knew about achievement, motivation, and learning modality.
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."
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
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”…
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…