The Nobel Committee has chosen two advocates for children to share the Nobel Peace Prize. Those two advocates come from different countries, with different religions. Those trying to lead education forward all with different voices, coming from different perspectives, are all fighting for the quality of the system. All the constituencies, parents, teachers, leaders, policy makers, pundits, enter the conversation about education with different opinions, but all are fighting…

October 14, 2014

Dear High School Student-Athlete:

There are many reasons to participate on a high school sports team.  Movement is the only way to nourish your brain.  A coach can be another adult in your life who wants you to succeed.  Your teammates become friends for life, and what’s cooler than representing your community?

In the New York Times bestselling book SPARK: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by Harvard…

The proposed newer version of the ISLLC Standards increases the number of standards to 11 and consistently adds the words "well being" when talking about the success of every student as the introductory stem to every standard descriptor.  As in the earlier standards, the 2014 standards are followed by functions that describe ways in which leaders can demonstrate each standard. It is about action. The functions include words like those in the standards: develop, nurture,…

We have no meaningful evidence at hand indicating that these tests can accurately distinguish between well taught and badly taught students.” So says testing expert James Popham in the recent PDK Journal regarding the use of tests to evaluate teachers and principals.

There is much evidence against the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers and administrators but those in charge at the Federal and State level seem to adopt the “don’t confuse me with the facts” attitude. …

Where Do Biases Start? A Challenge to Educators

Ed Week

Earlier this year, I was invited to speak to a few hundred African-American male high school students in Jacksonville, Fla. The young people there were searching for answers in the…

One Day That Changed Everything…

 This is an update on the wonderful videos made by HSLDA. If only everyone America could see both…

 The short one at 22 minutes is called "Building the Machine – the parent interviews". For some reason it is now unavailable. The substitute here is the PREVIEW, which is better in a way because it's only 7 minutes, and here is that link:  …

How poor districts will fare with CCSS

Prior to the Common Core, states set their own standards and chose their own tests to measure student progress, writes Marc Tucker in Education Week. States that required a test for graduation used exams that could be passed by students with a 9th grade level of English literacy and a deeply flawed understanding of middle school math. We currently recruit teachers from the lower ranks of those high school graduates,…

That fuss about AP History

In October 2012, the College Board revamped its AP History course to encourage greater depth in fewer topics, writes Emmanuel Felton for The Hechinger Report. The class is the College Board's second most popular after AP English Language and Composition, with 442,890 students taking the exam in 2013. Its course description for the first time calls for teachers to impart critical thinking skills to their students, ideas in line with…