A Newsletter for Education Leaders
Indian Students Wield Tests for College Spots
India has one of the world’s youngest populations, yet as the middle class has steadily grown, so has the cutthroat competition for the limited slots in the country’s system of higher education. High school seniors must pass national board exams to graduate from high school. But those same board exams also serve as the rough equivalent of SATs for students applying to most programs in many universities...more»
Student Loan Bill Scorecard
A look at who fared well -- and who didn't -- in legislation to overhaul the student loan programs...more»
Students playing catch-up as they hit college
Each year, tens of thousands of Texas students land in this academic purgatory – no longer in high school but not ready for college. About 40 percent of recent high school graduates in the state's public universities and colleges need at least one remedial class. Statistics show those students take longer to earn a college degree, if they do at all...more»
FCC Broadband Plan Pushes Ambitious Agenda for U.S. Education
After almost a year of development that included holding 36 public workshops in person and online and reading through 23,000 public comments, the Federal Communications Commission has released its national broadband plan with a formal report to Congress. Calling high-speed Internet access "indispensable for the 21st century, the foundation for our economy, the foundation for our democracy in the digital age," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski declared the plan "ambitious but achievable"...more»
The Great Charter Debate: Part Four
This is part four of a debate between myself and a colleague who believes I have been too critical of charter schools. In Part One, he shared his perspective on the value of charter schools. I responded with my own views on the limitations of charters as a force for reform, and this week he offered his rebuttal to that. Here is my response to that one, Part Four of the great charter debate...more»
Mobile Learning Makes Its Mark on K-12
Mobile devices such as smartphones and iPods, still seen as nuisances or contraband by many schools, are now viewed by an increasing number of teachers and administrators as cost-effective tools to build and sustain 1-to-1 computing programs. But while the use of mobile devices for learning is sparking a shift in the ed-tech landscape, its impact on student achievement is unclear...more»
Educators Struggle to Design Mobile-Learning Content
Developing meaningful lessons that fit the constraints of small-screen devices is a challenge. How can educators (and publishers) find or develop meaningful, standards-based lessons that fit the visual and data constraints of a small-screen device?...more»
In Texas Curriculum Fight, Identity Politics Leans Right
In the fight over curriculum, conservatives in Texas have more in common with liberals than they think. In reality, this controversy is the latest version of a debate that reaches back many decades and is perhaps essential in a heterogeneous democracy whose identity has long been in flux...more»
Historians speak out against proposed Texas textbook changes
Historians criticized proposed revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum Tuesday, saying that many of the changes are historically inaccurate and that they would affect textbooks and classrooms far beyond the state's borders...more»
A Private College Goes For-Profit
Dana is sold a year after another Lutheran institution was sold. But new owners plan to keep tenure and the traditional, residential mission...more»
One Classroom, From Sea to Shining Sea
No one in either party today has the courage to say it, but what made sense for a sparsely settled continent at the dawn of the Republic is ill suited to the needs of a 21st-century nation competing in a global economy. Our lack of a national curriculum, national teacher training standards and federal financial support to attract smart young people to the teaching profession all contribute mightily to the mediocre-to-poor performance of American students, year in and year out, on international education assessments. So does a financing system that relies heavily on local property taxes and fails to guarantee students in, say, Kansas City the same level of schooling as students in more affluent communities...more»
In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt
Commercial trade schools are under fire because they are attracting more students and Pell grants. At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition that can exceed $30,000 a year...more»
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FCC announces Children’s Agenda for broadband
The FCC has announced the creation of the FCC’s “Children’s Agenda for Digital Opportunity,” which will build on the four pillars of digital access, digital literacy, digital citizenship, and digital safety. The Children’s Agenda is part of the National Broadband Plan to be released this week...more»
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Panel Proposes Single Standard for All Schools
A panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents proposed a uniform set of academic standards on Wednesday, laying out their vision for what all the nation’s public school children should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation...more»
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False Fronts? Behind Higher Education's Voluntary Accountability Systems
A new report from Education Sector and the American Enterprise Institute examines current voluntary accountability systems—the University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN) and the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA)—and argues that these systems are not measuring up...more»
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Cultivating Failure
Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse is much more than a restaurant. It is a standard-bearer for correct moral values, and now it will dictate our kids’ education. Do we really want this?...more»
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Will Millennials become the chump generation?
A study of the 50 million Millennials 18 and over by the Pew Research Center found some surprising and some not-so-surprising developments. Surprising (to me): Almost two-fifths of Millennials have tattoos, up from a third among Gen Xers and from a seventh (15 percent) among boomers. Not surprising: Millennials are the first truly digital generation. Three-quarters have created a profile on Facebook or some other social networking site. Only half of Gen Xers and 30 percent of boomers have done so. A fifth of Millennials have posted videos of themselves online, far more than Gen Xers (6 percent) or boomers (2 percent)...more»
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School Districts Lay Foundation for Mobile Devices
More districts are allowing students to bring their own notebooks, iPhones or other computing tools to school and connect them to the district network...more»
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New Battleground for Publishers
With demand for online assessment and e-tutoring tools growing, good textbooks alone are no longer enough to win over professors...more»
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Plan to stem dropout rate stirs controversy
President Obama is proposing $900M to turn around the nation’s worst performing schools—but to get the money, districts would have to agree to dramatic changes that have some educators concerned...more»
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Feds release new national ed-tech plan
The plan, called “Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology,” calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all students; standards and assessments that measure key 21st-century skills and expertise; a shift to a model of “connected teaching,” in which teams of interconnected educators replace solo classroom practitioners; always-on connectivity that is available to students and teachers both inside and outside of school; and a rethinking of basic assumptions, such as seat time, that limit schools’ ability to innovate...more»
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Race to the Top finalists announced
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has named 16 finalists in the first round of its Race to the Top competition, which will deliver $4.35 billion in school reform grants. The winners will be chosen in April...more»
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Let's give children the 'store of human knowledge
In virtually every Western society, education is in trouble. Unfortunately, however, policymakers tend to obsess only about the symptoms of the problem – unsatisfactory standards in core subjects, growth of a cohort of poorly schooled underachievers or erosion of classroom discipline – and not the cause...more»
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Four Myths About the Online Education Experience
U.S. News University Directory in collaboration with E-learning insiders clear up four common myths about the online learning experience and how online classes are perceived. ...more»
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Obama Calls for Major Change in Education Law
The Obama administration is seeking changes to the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law and proposing to eliminate provisions that have labeled one in three schools as failing...more»
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Lowering Student Loan Default Rates
In a new Education Sector report, "Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed," co-authors Erin Dillon and Robin V. Smiles analyze why students default on their college loans and argue institutions are vital to lowering student loan default rates...more»
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Princeton students, profs give Kindle mixed grades
Princeton University has released findings from its semester-long pilot of Amazon.com’s Kindle DX electronic reader, and the results appear mixed...Students and faculty who were surveyed after the pilot program ended said they appreciated the portability of the Kindle DX, and the fact that it greatly reduced the printing and photocopying they did for their courses. But they said they missed the ability to highlight text directly, take notes, and flip back and forth through pages of their textbook easily...more»
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6 Months, $90,000 and (Maybe) a Great Idea
The entrepreneur-in-residence model has gained prominence as a calculated way for a venture capital firm to nurture a successful company into being and to increase the odds of solid returns...more»
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The 'Prior Learning' Edge
An examination of the educational records of more than 62,000 adult undergraduates at 48 colleges finds that students who had sought and been awarded academic credit by their institutions for "prior learning" earned in the military, corporate training and other non-classroom settings were more than twice as likely to graduate, and to persist even if they did not graduate, than were their peers who had not earned such credit...more»
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Prison Students Illustrate the Shortcomings of Public Schools
Today more than 100,000 juveniles are incarcerated around the country. Schools for prisoners are obviously the extreme of the alternative school spectrum. In New York City incarcerated youth make up just a fraction of the 70,000 students in alternative setting. Nonetheless, these schools illustrate the many ways that traditional public schools cannot possibly meet the diverse needs of all American students...more»
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Experts Lay Out Vision for Future Assessments
Led by Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, a panel of experts outlined a comprehensive system that includes summative and formative tests of higher-order thinking skills, reflecting a marketplace that they say places increasing value on such skills...more»
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Free Online Courses Don't Hurt Paid Enrollment
Offering some online courses for free does not hurt paid enrollments, according to a recent study...more»
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Race to the Top?: Part III
True education reform involves two fundamental changes in our public education system. The first requires a structural shift in the areas that research has shown to actually improve education, such as teacher quality, class size, and available resources...The second demands a process shift in education, namely, changing the curricula that determine what and how teachers teach...more»
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The Web Way to Learn a Language
With the growth of broadband connectivity and social networks, companies have introduced a wide range of internet-based language learning products, both free and fee-based, that allow students to interact in real time with instructors in other countries, gain access to their lesson plans wherever they are in the world, and communicate with like-minded virtual pen pals who are also trying to learn the same language, reports the New York Times...more»
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6 Emerging Technologies That Will Impact College Campuses
As students increasingly learn on the go, they demand that their colleges and universities stay up to date on the latest technology. That's where the 2010 Horizon Report comes in...more»
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Worldwide eLearning Market Surges to $27.1 Billion in 2009
The global market for eLearning reached US$27.1 billion in 2009 according to a new report by Ambient Insight called, "The Worldwide Market for Self-paced eLearning Products and Services: 2009-2014 Forecast and Analysis." The demand is growing by a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8% and revenues will reach $49.6 billion by 2014...more»
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Are You Better Off Than Your Parents Were
A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development looks at various indicators of intergenerational social mobility, which refers to the “relationship between the socioeconomic status of parents and the status their children will attain as adults.” It appears that the United States has less intergenerational social mobility than many other industrialized countries...more»
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For-Profit Colleges Change Higher Education's Landscape
For-profit universities now educate about 7 percent of the nation's roughly 19 million students who enroll at degree-granting institutions each fall. And the proportion rises to 10 percent, or 2.6 million, if you count students who enroll year round...more»
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Divided Attention
Students' minds have been wandering since the dawn of education. But until recently—so the worry goes—students at least knew when they had checked out. A student today who moves his attention rapid-fire from text-messaging to the lecture to Facebook to note-taking and back again may walk away from the class feeling buzzed and alert, with a sense that he has absorbed much more of the lesson than he actually has...more»
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Tuition-Free University Gains a Following
A year since its formation, the online University of the People has attracted several hundred students, a team of top academic advisers, and growing support worldwide...more»
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Holding Colleges Accountable: Is Success Measurable?
Time magazine education reporter Gilbert Cruz sits down with Policy Director Kevin Carey to discuss why parents—and public officials—should demand more accountability from colleges...more»
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If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online
The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation...more»
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America's K-12 Education Strategy
Technology is addressing the dysfunctions in education...more»
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Annual Poll of Freshmen Shows Effect of Recession
The recession hit this year’s college freshmen hard, affecting how they chose a school as well as their ability to pay for it, according to an annual nationwide survey released Thursday...more»
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Apple's iPad: What does it offer for e-Learning?
The Apple iPad offers an interesting combination of features and options that make it worth considering for possible mobile learning applications. But there are drawbacks to the device as well. Here’s how the iPad may (or may not) be able to fit into your plans...more»
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Has Google developed the next wave of online education?
Combining text, audio, and video chat with features like drag-and-drop documents and interactive polls, Google Wave's Web 2.0 features could add unprecedented depth to student interaction, many educators and campus decision makers say. But some IT officials remain skeptical...more»
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As School Exit Tests Prove Tough, States Ease Standards
On the way to creating a statewide exit test for graduation, many states have softened standards, delayed the requirement or added alternative paths to a high school diploma...more»
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Whiteboards' Impact on Teaching Seen as Uneven
The large, computerized screens—which allow Internet access, video and audio presentations, digital assessments using remote clickers, and recorded lessons for replaying later—are seen by proponents as an investment in modernizing classrooms to meet the needs of the digital generation. But while the boards have gained a loyal following among even old-school teachers, at a cost of up to $5,000 a classroom they have also drawn significant criticism as being nothing more than an expensive update on an age-old teaching tool...more»
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.Scholars Test Emotion-Sensitive Tutoring Software
'Intelligent' Systems Respond to Students' Cues...more»
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In India, a Student-Recruiting Industry Ups the Ante for U.S. Colleges
India has become a mass market for a different kind of student: undergraduates. They are far less informed than older students about where to study. And while the United States remains a top choice, they are more likely to consider places like Canada, Australia, Britain—even Singapore—for their degrees...more»
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Schools Face Uphill Challenge to Improve
Despite decades of reform attempts and billions of dollars of investment, the American education system badly "needs improvement," reports CBS News Correspondent Russ Mitchell...more»
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Race to the Middle? How to make a little education reform money go a long way.
The big education story these days is the state competition for some $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants to be passed out by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. President Obama said this week he'll seek an additional $1.35 billion for the program for next year, but more important than the amount is whether Mr. Duncan really wants to race to the top, or just the mediocre middle...more»
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A Study Offers a Caution on Obama's Community College Pitch
In his State of the Union address President Obama reiterated his longstanding support for community colleges, calling them "a career pathway to the children of so many working families." A new study out this month, however, suggests that community colleges could take a cue from for-profit, or career, colleges. The Educational Policy Institute, a research group in Virginia Beach, Va., based its study on a federal data on nearly 7,000 higher education institutions, 41 percent of which were career colleges, as well as its own surveys...more»
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Education Technology is Not About Gadgetry
The promising use of technology in education is not about creating gimmicky video games or virtual worlds, but about using software and hardware to rethink the business of teaching...more»
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A Smarter Path to a "Race to the Top" in Education Reform
RTTT is based on the theory that incentives and guidelines provided by the DOE can spur effective education reforms by state governments and school districts. But past experience with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) shows that strengthening federal control may result in a number of unintended consequences...more»
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Differentiate, Don't Standardize
Simply stating what students must know and be able to do is not enough to ensure the desired outcomes. When standardization is taken to mean universalization, the result may well be lower achievement for many students...more»
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New Report Profiles Schools With Expanded Time As National Leaders Call For More Time In School
A new report by the National Center on Time & Learning has found that a growing number of U.S. schools have broken from the traditional school calendar and expanded learning time to improve educational outcomes. The report is based on a database developed by the National Center on Time & Learning and is the first effort to catalogue schools operating with days substantially longer than the six-hour norm and in many cases a calendar that exceeds the standard 180 day school year...more»
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eSN Special Report: Beyond virtual schools
These days, virtual education can be more than a home-schooled child sitting alone in front of a computer. Purveyors of online-education products are creating various delivery methods to suit school districts, students, teachers, and parents with differing needs, requirements, and budgetary constraints...more»
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That Old College Lie
Pell grants for higher education seemed such a good idea in the 1980s. But a careful look at who benefits from them today raises disturbing issues...more»
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