Emotions are contagious…

SPED data and accessibility

A new report from the National Center for Educational Outcomes analyzes whether states publicly report data for students with disabilities with the same frequency, and in the same detail, as it reports on the assessment of nondisabled children, as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It also assesses reporting of performance gaps across years, and ease of access to public reporting of participation and…

Common Core's next problem

As California districts finish administering new Smarter Balanced online Common Core assessments, educators face the next hurdle: sharing data with millions of parents about how their children fared, writes Sarah Tully for EdSource. It's anticipated that fewer students will meet proficiency standards compared to the earlier California Standards Tests in 2013 and before. New scores break down into four categories: "standard exceeded,"…

Behind the Headline: Study: Kids Can Learn As Much from ‘Sesame Street’ as from Preschool By Education Next…

The Need For Digital Literacy…

Behind the Headline: Take the Test to Get Into China’s Top Universities By Education Next…

High Performing Minority Districts: An Anomaly?…

Truly, social investment 

Two decades ago, Harris Rosen, who grew up poor on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and became wealthy in the Florida hotel business, decided to shepherd part of his fortune into the troubled Orlando community of Tangelo Park, reports Lizette Alvarez for The New York Times. Twenty-one years later, with an infusion of $11 million of Mr. Rosen's money so far, Tangelo Park is a striking success story. Nearly all its seniors graduate from…

Who authorizes the authorizers?

A blog post by Arianna Prothero in Education Week looks at the continuing debate, and differing schools of thought, around charter authorization. Authorizers and how they make decisions have gotten more attention lately, especially in Ohio and Michigan, where state- and press-led investigations have turned up academic and financial failures at charters. Some have subsequently argued that weak authorizing practices lead to weak…

Want to retain teachers?

The combination of poor student performance and limited teacher experience makes it especially difficult for majority low-income schools across the country to fulfill strict guidelines under NCLB, writes educator Paul Barnwell in The Atlantic. Barnwell himself was a novice teacher in 2004 in the Teach Kentucky program, which put him in a classroom with minimal training. He quit his assignment by Christmas. Although some educators hit…

Option 3: Actually USE the smartphones…

Asking students to work in complete isolation…

Don’t Argue For Your Limitations…

Well-designed professional development solves problems…