edBurst Review, April 2010
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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