The education crisis in the United States has made headlines for quite some time. While education underperforms and stays largely behind other industries in its technology uptake, many of us have been looking to the promise of personal digital learning to revolutionize the classroom and education.
Archive for the ‘Education Research’ category
Can Apple Technology Save Education?
January 20, 2012Teacher Unions, Mac the Knife, and Dollar Power
January 18, 2012The poor can be bought for little or nothing, the charming scoundrel Macheath (“Mac the Knife”) discovered when his old favorite, Jenny, was persuaded by the Peachums to turn him in for a pittance. True of the 18thCentury beggars celebrated in the “Threepenny Opera,” the principle applies no less well to struggling 21stcentury nonprofits.
Everything You Know About Education Is Wrong
December 16, 2011Think of the ingredients that make for a good school. Small classes. Well-educated teachers. Plenty of funding. Combine, mix well, then bake. Turns out, your recipe would be horribly wrong, at least according to a new working paper out of Harvard. Its take away: Schools shouldn’t focus on resources. They should focus on culture, says Jordan Weissmann, an associate editor at The Atlantic.
Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers
November 4, 2011The teaching profession is crucial to America’s society and economy, but public-school teachers should receive compensation that is neither higher nor lower than market rates. Do teachers currently receive the proper level of compensation?
When the Best is Mediocre
October 18, 2011American education has problems, almost everyone is willing to concede, but many think those problems are mostly concentrated in our large urban school districts. In the elite suburbs, where wealthy and politically influential people tend to live, the schools are assumed to be world-class.
Momentum Builds to Restructure Teacher Education
November 17, 2010Published Online: November 17, 2010 Washington With conversations about the best ways to evaluate teacher performance already proliferating across the nation, preservice preparation could be the next stop on the teacher-quality continuum to receive a similarly high level of scrutiny. New models for preparing teachers, such as the yearlong apprenticeship or “residency” model, have received [...]
Districts Try Out Revamped Teacher-Pay Systems
November 10, 2010By Stephen Sawchuk A handful of districts, some with the approval of their local teachers’ unions, are experimenting with alternatives to the fundamental components that govern teachers’ base-pay raises. Ranging from a long-standing plan in Eagle County, Colo., to a contract ratified earlier this year by teachers in the Pittsburgh district, the systems tie raises more [...]
Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected
November 10, 2010By TRIP GABRIEL An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another. But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known. Only 12 percent [...]
Welcome to the Missouri Education Reform Council
March 25, 2009Welcome to the Missouri Education Reform Council blog. We hope to begin a discussion about education policy in Missouri. By bringing to light research, effective reforms in other states, and by gathering the opinions and support of all stakeholders in Missouri, we believe that discussion can turn into positive change for Missouri’s children.
