In their current issue, Washington Monthly has an interesting article about one vision of the future of a college education.
The article profiles a company called StraighterLine that is using a Netflix model to offer all-you-can-handle online courses for only $99 a month.
According to the writer, this is just part [...]
I guess the problem with international assessments, the ones that show US kids doing poorly compared to their peers in other countries, is that we’re using the wrong ones.
At least according to the expert Jay Mathews interviewed.
He says the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)) is a bad [...]
With just a few word substitutions, last Sunday’s Dilbert struck me as a great commentary on how teachers are often treated.
Especially the last two frames.
Obvious, indeed!
[...]
When it comes to having absolute control over the content they sell, big media companies don’t give up easily.
Or more accurately control over the content they want you pay for every time you watch it.
You may remember that at the end of last year, the [...]
This being the overly-large school district we are, the economic mess now in progress means that we get to go through yet another round of armageddon-sized budget cuts.
To give you some idea of how large, the amount we’re supposedly in the hole is about the same as that spent annually [...]
In his weekly Post column, I actually agree with Jay Mathews’ assessment of the campaign promises on education issues being tossed around by the two candidates for Virginia governor: Â Pleasant sound bites with little substance.
Whichever Virginia candidate wins will do his best for kids, even if much of what [...]
An article in the most recent issue of Scholastic Administrator asks that question.
The short answer is no. At least not that particular device.
Certainly highly portable, connected devices are making their way into the classroom, somewhat slowly since most are smuggled in by way of student pockets and backpack.
And, hopefully, [...]
The regular Five Myths column from the Sunday opinion section of the Post addresses some statements of “truth” on the topic of merit pay popular with politicians and education “experts”.
And the five are:
1. Merit pay has a strong track record. [That one's not even true in' [...]
Paul Krugman is a Nobel-prize winning economist and someone who sees a direct connection between education and the economic success of the US.*
He also says that our national “educational neglect” has led to “a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position” in the world.
And the current financial mess is only [...]
Bud Hunt has written an excellent response to those teachers in his district who want the internet filtering system to do their jobs for them.
Here’s the essence of his post, something that should be at the heart of every district’s philosophy in this matter.
What we’ve decided is that we [...]
Gerald Bracey, one of the smartest, not to mention frankest, voices in the discussion of American education reform, lines up nine myths about public education and flattens them.
It’s all good stuff that should be front and center in the debate but my favorites are these:
2. Schools alone can close [...]
Virginia is an odd place, at least when it comes to politics. Among other things we have an election for Governor and much of the state legislature in this so-called “off year”.
And since the Governor can only serve one term, we get to choose between two largely unknown characters.
When it [...]
This could be a very good thing.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski delivered a major address today in which he offered a strong case for net neutrality.
It could be a lot of talk but at least he seems to have a good grasp of the situation and the problems that need [...]
When it comes to web publishing, every school in our overly-large school district is an island.
Every school (and most offices) has someone called a “curator” who has an extra duty as the sole gatekeeper for what appears on their little part of the web.
As a result, the quality of content [...]
Washington DC is commonly used as a metaphorical punching bag by a wide variety of critics, both in and out of politics, and that’s to be expected considering this is the national capital.
But once in a while there comes instances of massive hypocrisy spouted by critics that sound like something [...]
Larry Cuban looks at one of the current hot topics in education reform, merit pay for teachers (what he calls “pay for performance”), and reminds everyone that there’s nothing new here.
In touting pay-for-performance plans, federal and state decision-makers fail to point out (or ignore) past efforts to link teacher performance [...]
Continuing with the set up of my new MacBook Pro comes the question of whether or not I install Office.
It’s not a matter of cost since I have access to a copy (legally!) through our district’s license.
And I certainly have enough memory and hard drive space, even for a bloated, [...]
I don’t get a new computer very often, but it’s time. And Friday my new laptop, a 15″ MacBook Pro, was delivered by FedEx.
Now comes the process of making it my new computing home and figuring out what I need off the old one (which will soon become a [...]
Last Tuesday was the first day of school here in the overly-large school district. And I took the day off.
Everyone is too busy getting things started with the kids to want any of us evil central office types in their building anyway, so I went into DC to play tourist [...]
This essay from Zen Habits is one of those wish-I’d-written-that sort of posts.
Education Needs to be Turned on Its Head is a savage, honest and excellent assessment of what’s wrong the US education system from a non-educator (although, like most of us, some of his closest relatives are teachers).
And [...]
A little over a month ago I ranted about the organizational changes now going on where I work, here in a small corner of the instruction department in our overly-large school district.
In that post I also mentioned that I would also be getting a new job, something that was [...]
The September issue of Wired Magazine (one of the few analog publications I still get), has an interesting look at what they call the Good Enough Revolution.
Think the Flip and other pocket-sized cameras that do “good enough” video. Hulu – good enough TV. Netbooks – good enough computers.
The Flip’s [...]
Love TED Talks! This new one from TED Global in England last month features Daniel Pink discussing the science of motivation.
Pink is addressing the business world in his presentation but I think parts of what he has to say could apply to those of us in the [...]
In the Room for Debate section of the New York Times’ web site, they recently posed that question and invited a variety of people to write a short post to address it.
Most of the writers are involved with the universities that market the degrees, so let’s look at the [...]
At a meeting earlier this week, we had a short but lively discussion about the role of personal network devices in our schools, spark by a report on how our experiment into the instructional uses of the iPod Touch from last spring would continue this year.
But I also wanted [...]
Today is the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley.
I didn’t find that fact in Wikipedia or any news site and I’ve never been much of a Presley fan.
I remember the date very well because he died exactly one week after we moved to Las Vegas to start my first [...]
Last week at work was one of those that pretty well swamps everything else, which means this weekend I’ve been catching up on a very full aggregator (and the ever-popular email).
The RSS stream included Jay Mathews regular Monday opinion column from the Post (which, strangely enough, is printed in [...]
In the opinion section of this morning’s Post, a DC charter school teacher finishing her fourth year in the profession explains why she’s leaving.
The simple answer is burnout, a reason often given by the 30 – 50% of teachers (numbers vary based on the study) who exit from the [...]
