STEM does not mean teaching more. It means teaching differently. It requires project and problem based learning. It requires partnerships with businesses and the health care industry. Science and technology are pushing our lives forward simultaneously. Math, in the service of science, technology, and problem solving, is a partner. New engineers will benefit from innovative design programs supported by the arts and informed by history to break open how we illuminate our homes, play…

Charters slightly better for special needs (in NYC, anyway)

New York City's Independent Budget Office has released a report finding children with disabilities stayed at charters at a slightly higher rate than at traditional public schools, contrary to the prevailing narrative, writes Elizabeth Harris for The New York Times. The report examined 3,000 students at charters and 7,200 students at nearby traditional public schools who started kindergarten in 2008. It found…

Hands off the Carnegie Unit

A new report from the Carnegie Foundation for Teaching looks at the Carnegie Unit -- or credit hour -- which it established over a century ago as a rough gauge of student readiness for college-level academics, standardizing student exposure to subject material by ensuring consistent amounts of instructional time. Reformers now argue that reliance on the Carnegie Unit has in fact slowed progress toward diplomas and degrees. Critics say that…

Why grade-span testing won't work

Despite a real possibility that, going forward, states will have to test students only once in each grade span (once in elementary, middle, and high school), a new paper from the Brookings Institution argues that annual testing is critical to judging school quality. Using a decade of data, the paper projects how schools would rate based only on average test scores in a solitary grade -- the situation under a grade-span testing regime…

The increasingly less-common Core

One hope of the Common Core was that states would discard the national patchwork of 50 sets of standards measured by 50 different tests, writes Emma Brown in The Washington Post. For the first time, parents and policymakers would directly compare student performance in one state to the rest of the nation, making it harder for lagging states to hide weak performance. The goal seemed easily within reach in 2011, as 45 states and the…

There is free lunch, but what does it signify?

"Free and reduced-price lunch" is generally used to indicate concentrations of poverty and how these affect learning, but is it the best yardstick? asks Will Huntsberry for NPR. Does qualifying for the program necessarily indicate risk of falling through the cracks of American education? To qualify for the federal lunch program, families must be at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level -- about $44,000…

“You will never accomplish your design of forming sensible people, unless you begin by making playful children.”

                                                                                                                                                 -Rousseau

Beneath the headlines, there are danger signs that lie ahead as a result of the current calls to reform education.  Some economists, business leaders, and politicians use the metrics…

“Lifeworthy” Learning

In this Ed. Magazine article, editor Lory Hough reports on the recent thinking of David Perkins (Harvard Graduate School of Education) on what’s worth learning in school. Perkins says there’s often a skeptical student at the back of the class who asks, “Why do we need to know this?” Lots of teachers, including Perkins, find this an uncomfortable moment: “When that ballistic missile comes from the back of the room, it’s a good…

As the list of 21st century learning attributes grows, what is included in the learning process to be evaluated grows along with it. Are we willing to rely on the existing manner of assessment and grades as evidence of learning? Or, is evidence of successful teaching and learning a mixture of achievement on tests, motivation of all learners to engage in the process, reduced discipline incidents, increased attendance rates, and, just maybe, increased student…

Passing the HP HPE0-J74—great advantages for the IT professionals

Understanding the nature of HPE0-J74 Foundations of HPE Storage Solutions

The HP Foundations of HPE Storage Solutions is a well-known HP certification exam, which is associated with  numerous promising job roles. The HP HPE0-J74 questions has designed the core areas of HP Foundations of HPE Storage Solutions in a technical way and in the wake of advanced HP sector…

Leaders' beliefs about technology and lack of understanding about the dynamic and sometimes invisible nature of the use of technology are two barriers to progress.  If a systematic plan for increasing technology applications does not exist in a school or system, question why.  When new standards are required, schools traditionally have planned out professional development, purchases of new texts and/or supplies, and observed as teachers have adopted and used these new methods and…

Today, for the first and only time in as long as I can remember, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a teacher. The reason? One that I am embarrassed to admit. 

As an elementary educator, there are any number of challenges I face on a daily basis. We’ve ALL been there. Schedules that seem impossible, students who struggle, curriculum demands, parental communication, interruptions for students leaving early or coming late, social drama “spillover”, not enough time…

Progressive educators think that the way you redesign curricula is you throw out all traditional content and introduce dozens of soft skills,  strange new literacies, and 21st century this-and-that.

The people proposing this sort of redesign are the same people who have controlled education for 75 years. Do you believe in your heart that they will now do a better job? You know they won’t. (You probably suspect the truth. They don’t want the schools to do…