From an interview on EducationViews.org, One answer in particular is crucial, I think, for figuring out where we go next:

Michael F. Shaughnessy: Now, details----there are a lot of different theories about what is wrong with education. Your take ?

Bruce Price: I believe that most of the administrative, financial and cultural issues usually discussed are…

I originally posted this on November 30, 2011:

Safe havens - this is what every school needs to be for children! When children feel safe, they feel confident; and when children feel confident, they feel good; and when children feel good, their brains release endorphins; and when the brain releases endorphins our children are primed for learning!

Regardless of what curriculum, standards, resources or materials we use in our schools if our children don't feel safe, valued, respected and appreciated, they will have a very…

Read the entire article at …

Superheroes Help Students Read with Fluency

Free Online Content Forces Publishers to Adjust

Commercial publishers are accustomed to battling with one another for control of state and local markets for textbooks and other academic materials. Now they face a more complicated task: how to…

“E-books have the potential to change the way our students read and consume text because of their interactivity and convenience,” say Heather Ruetschlin Schugar, Carol Smith, and Jordan Schugar (West Chester University) in this helpful article in The Reading Teacher, But here’s what a fourth grader said after finishing the e-book Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really Big Adventure: “I have no clue what I just read.” Why? Because he was so engaged making the wiggly woos howl…

K-12 districts, education groups, and companies deploy 'crowdsourcing' to identify better approaches

In this New York Times article, Stephanie Coontz (Evergreen State College) says that knowing the average can be helpful – for example, one’s college paper is not as good as those written by most classmates, or most people my age don’t exercise as much as I do. “Averages are useful because many traits, behaviors, and outcomes are distributed in a bell-shaped curve,” says Coontz, “with most results clustered around the middle and a much smaller group of outliers at the high and low…

For 15 years I’ve been speaking with, listening to and learning from high school and college students … you’ve told me a lot about what you want, need and are concerned about as you contemplate moving from school to business..

Your letters tell me that the following are some of the things that you need to learn as you think about going into any…

L’esame finale e` uno strumento che non solo serve ad esaminare gli studenti ma anche a valutare la competenza degli insegnanti. Sono diversi i fattori che hanno montato una nuova polemica sull’esame finale d’italiano nelle scuole publiche: Uno dei fattori e` l’esame di accesso che in passato veniva usato e considerato dagli insegnanti come sistema giusto ed efficace per conoscere gli studenti e programmare le lezioni adatte al loro livello.  Adesso, invece,…

Original blog post is @ http://wbrennan.wordpress.com by @DrBillBrennan

Kindergartners, Twitter and Common Core: The power of connected…

Engrade, the district-level education platform that unifies the data, curriculum, and tools teachers, schools leaders, and administrators use every day by integrating all of a district’s software and systems, today announced it has secured $5 million in a Series B funding round to accelerate its nationwide expansion and product development. The company has grown rapidly in recent years as it has worked with schools and districts to solve one of the most…

July 3, 2013

Happy (almost) Independence Day!

Yesterday, a friend and I took our children to the New York Public Library to see an exhibit of one of two known surviving copies of The Declaration of Independence, written in Thomas Jefferson's own handwriting.  According to the exhibit, before the Declaration of Independence was…

July 1, 2013

My book review in the July 2013 issue of Parenting: School Years is all about keeping kids reading during the long summer break, but what about writing?  How can you keep your kids from losing the  important literacy skills of writing?  Create summer journals!

Take ordinary composition notebooks ($1.00 or less on sale) and any craft materials you already have at home; construction paper, scrapbook paper, stickers, duct tape, seashells, etc., and…