Archive
component:where.staffing-and-scheduling
Teacher Quality Means Some Must Go
The President and Secretary deserve credit for advancing the teacher quality agenda–a tough thing for democrats to do. Some of the credit for that goes to Jon Schnur and DFER. Because we don’t have very good predictive techniques, it’s important to watch teachers in their first few years,…
Emerging Vision for Learning Platforms
There are a handful of conversations swirling around about next generation learning platforms that will combine adaptive/personalized content, assessment, learning communities, with aligned student, teacher, and school services. The ones that gain wide usage will combine open and proprietary content (e.g., basic and premium cable) with a open app platform…
What's a Superintendent to Do?
This all gets interesting when you consider the merged capabilities of: School of One, a personalized playlist of tailored learning objects, adaptive content and virtual learning environments, virtual and blended school models, a smart back end that tracks learning (an LMS with visual student profile), competency bundles (like…
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…
Learning platforms to come
The next generation of transformative learning platforms will include personalized instruction, social learning, and related services. They will integrate the functionality of learning management, student information systems, and longitudinal data systems. They’ll take advantage of the explosion of data that will come along with assessment embedded in digital content (e.g., score…
Learning a la carte (and how to make it coherent)
Rick Hess has laid out a market-friendly education agenda at American Enterprise Institute, something I appreciate, and recently hosted a form on the demand side of quality education. I participated on a panel; everyone else wrote a paper; I got off easy as ‘discussant’. Kim Smith, founder of…
The blended world
Our kids already live in a blended world. K-12 is starting to catch up with a variety of models that combine the best of online learning and onsite support. Here’s 5 trends signaling a blended singularity: Schools become blended. The biggest growth area for online learning is traditional…
The adolescent politics of virtual education
In 1995, I was sure that the explosion of the web would result in a good deal of online learning competition—and fast. I may have been right about the first but not the second. It took a dozen years for online learning to get big and competitive, but…
How new should a new school be?
During a recent AdvanceIE.org school design session, I was struck by the challenge of designing a high school right now. If it opens in 2010, what should it look like in 2014 when the first class graduates? Here’s just a couple of the new design questions: 1. Time to…
School of One: pilot project lives up to its name
Education changed on July 6 at PS131 when Joel Rose and an intrepid group of teachers opened a sixth grade summer school pilot program ambitiously called School of One. The NYTimes summarized it well today, but allow me a little hyperbolic extrapolation. Schools tell kids what…