Inspiring Others

Teaching the last backpack generation

By Zachary Walker on March 6th,…

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Does Sorting Students Improve Scores? An Analysis of Class Composition

By Amber M. Winkler

THE EDUCATION GADFLY WEEKLY

A wise wonk once wrote that the biggest challenge facing America’s schools is the enormous variation in the academic level of students coming into any given classroom. The subject of this NBER…

Motivational Style as a Key Consideration for Leaders

“Do you play to win – or not to lose?” ask social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson and Columbia University professor Tory Higgins in this intriguing Harvard Business Review article. “People answer these questions in very different ways, and that’s the challenge at the heart of good management – whether you’re managing your own performance or someone else’s.” [Although this article is…

Tracing Technology's Unintended K-12 Effects

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once famously said, "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle." Though he was speaking about the…

Second Chances

WHY YOU SHOULD THINK TWICE ABOUT PUTTING A TV IN YOUR KID’S BEDROOM

Posted on March 6, 2013 by …

Guest Post By John Thompson: The Texas Standardized Test Revolt

Children and the Environment, and How Our School System Can Help

by Hayley Scott

As report after report comes out about the inevitable demise of Earth’s finite resources, people around the world plead internally for change. Schools teach it, newscasts explain it and scientists research it. However, as positive as any awareness is, true change needs to be practiced for any actionable evolution to take place. One location that…

The Future Of Education Eliminates The Classroom, Because The World Is Your Class

WRITTEN BY: Marina Gorbis

A Happy Tale From a Common-Core Classroom

My classroom once hid a tale of two cities, largely driven by state testing. When I started teaching 16 years ago, the curriculum that I selected for my honors and intermediate students…

Inspiring Others

Your climate, your culture

By David Jakes on February 28th, 2013…

When teachers choose pension plans

By Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Amber M. Winkler / February 21, 2013

That the arcane issue of teacher pensions has turned into an emotional battleground can be evinced by recent headlines:

“Cuomo Pension Plan Sparks Fight With New York Unions” (March 14, 2012, Huffington Post)

“Don’t demonize teachers because of pension system’s faults” (October 21, 2012, Los Angeles Times)

“Pension…

The Learning Virtues

By …