edBurst Update
A Newsletter for Education Leaders
Mary Axelson, Editor
This Update is revised regularly.
Current articles have been added (at the top) as older articles are dropped (from the bottom).
We encourage you to forward to others in your organization.
www.bsgtv.com
March 2015
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Political attacks on Common Core are driven by pandering At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, the supposed evils of the Common Core educational standards were front and center. So, too, was an unmistakable case of pandering...more>> SIIA Estimates $8.38 Billion US Market for PreK-12 Educational Software and Digital Content The Education Technology Industry Network (ETIN) of SIIA today released its "2014 U.S. Education Technology Industry Market: PreK-12 Report." The report values the overall PreK-12 non-hardware education technology market at $8.38 billion, compared to last year's valuation of $7.9 billion...more>> Study: Policies Stifling Competency Ed While the idea of competency-based education is intriguing to about 89 percent of educators, only half as many have taken action in their schools or districts to promote it. The reason why, according to two education organizations that have studied the issue: policy obstacles "that make implementation challenging."...more>> Making K-12 'Innovation' Live Up to Its Hype Is innovation losing its luster? Critiques of the ubiquitous "disruptive innovation" theory-in the pages of The New Yorker(June 23, 2014) and elsewhere-have led some to wonder. Growing use of quotation marks around the word innovation, and the eye-rolling its use can sometimes provoke, reflect not only its overuse, but also a dawning reality...What we call "innovation" often lacks substance and sometimes works to our detriment, not our betterment...more>> The cloud in K-12: CDW-G tells us what educators need to know If the cloud isn't in your school already, it's probably looming on the horizon. According to CDW-G's "Cloud 401" report, "The K-12 education cloud market has matured, and many IT professionals are demanding more than just Cloud 101." It's a nice nod to the notion that schools are over the basics and ready for the nitty-gritty information...more>> Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Proof When the Silicon Valley Education Foundation(SVEF) began hosting the iHub Pitch Games in 2014 in partnership with the NewSchools Venture Fund, the goals were simple: Find a way to bring teachers and developers of edtech together to share feedback...more>> A New Approach to Designing Educational Technology Neuropsychologist David Rose spent years helping kids with learning disabilities participate in school by creating digital textbooks with pop-up graphics, text to speech, flexible fonts, and other customizable features to fit individual needs...more>> EdReports Releases First Reviews More fuel to splash on the simmering fire of discontent around the alignment of instructional materials to the Common Core standards appeared this week. When it launched in August last year, EdReports described its mission as producing free reviews of instructional materials focused on alignment to the Common Core and other indicators of high quality. Its first collection of product reviews was released this week...more>> Show America's Future the Money: All Needy Students Are Not Created Equal ...Students from low-income families have different needs, depending on their family background, their academic ability, and their school environment. And yet, our country's school finance system fails to differentiate between low-income students...more>> As Common Core Testing Is Ushered In, Parents and Students Opt Out On Monday morning, a few hundred students will file into classrooms at Bloomfield Middle School, open laptops and begin a new standardized test, one mandated across New Jersey and several other states for the first time this year...more>> A View From the Schools: Procuring and Implementing Digital Materials-What We Want Vendors to Know The purpose of this article is to provide vendors with information on the variety of approaches that leading-edge education decision-makers are using to address procurement and implementation of digital content...more>> Study: Twitter Discourse Reveals Deeper Rifts on Common Core Education battles on social media have a tendency to appear overblown, with furors over scandals and celebrity comments that explode and just as quickly flare out. But a new research project is teasing out the deeper philosophical disagreements about the future of American education on one of the seemingly most superficial social networks: Twitter...more>> Are 'Learning Styles' a Symptom of Education's Ills? Do you like to learn by seeing, hearing or doing? According to some education researchers, it may not matter. They say the idea of teaching according to students' "preferred learning styles" - auditory, visual or kinesthetic - has little to no empirical backing...more>> Testing Is Biggest Moneymaker for Education Technology Vendors Software vendors and publishers raked in $2.5 billion on digital assessment products in the United States in the 2012-2013 school year, according to estimates released this week by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). The total market for software and content in U.S. preK-12 education was up by $480 million to $8.38 billion...more>> Ed Games Need To Fill in Assessment Gaps To Be Fully Useful A joint study on game-playing in K-12 has found that educational game developers could improve the learning impact by making a few changes. The "A-Games Project" found that the tracking of student learning and linkages between game activities and curriculum could be better...more>> Want Better Schools? Try Reforming School Boards. How many times in debate over K-12 education policy have you heard about the primacy of "local control"? Typically that means total control by school boards of virtually every facet of local education...more>> AP U.S. History controversy becomes a debate on America An advanced high school U.S. history course has become the subject of an academic proxy war over what some consider a quasi-sacred national principle: American exceptionalism...more>> Poll: Widespread misperceptions about the Common Core standards Many Americans are confused about the Common Core State Standards, according to a new poll that finds widespread misperceptions that the academic standards - which cover only math and reading - extend to topics such as sex education, evolution, global warming and the American Revolution...more>> Virtual Education: Genuine Benefits or Real-Time Demerits? Twenty-six states operate publicly funded online schools, many of which don't have safeguards that prevent kids from cheating...more>> Why Schools are failing our boys My 8-year-old son has been struggling in school. Again. Re-entry after winter break has not been easy for him. The rules and restrictions of school - Sit Still. Be Quiet. Do What You Are Told, Nothing More, Nothing Less. - have been grating on him, and it shows...more>> What happens when computers, not teachers, pick what students learn? Teacher John Garuccio wrote a multiplication problem on a digital whiteboard in a corner of an unusually large classroom at David A. Boody Intermediate School in Brooklyn. About 150 sixth graders are in this math class - yes, 150 - but Garuccio's task was to help just 20 of them, with a lesson tailored to their needs...more>> States increase pre-K funding For the third year in a row, both Republican and Democratic policymakers are making significant investments in state-funded preschool programs, according to a January analysis of 2014-15 appropriations from the Education Commission of the States...more>> Nashville's Clandestine Black Schools On Monday, March 4, 1833, the nation's seventh president and Tennessee's most famous son, Andrew Jackson, was sworn in for his second term. On that same day another Tennessean, Alphonso M. Sumner, clandestinely opened a school for black children in Nashville...more>> School Is About More Than Training Kids to Be Adults What teachers risk when they focus only on ensuring adolescents are ready for college and their careers...more>> Testing Based on Common Core Standards Starts This Week Still, the perky 11-year-old worries. During a recent practice exam at her school in Ohio, she couldn't even log on. "It wouldn't let me," she said. "It kept saying it wasn't right, and it just kept loading the whole time."...more>> Standards Are at Stake in a Fight Over Schools in Arizona Diane M. Douglas, a Republican, was elected state schools superintendent in Arizona after vowing to repeal the Common Core, a set of reading and math standards intended to guide teachers from kindergarten through high school graduation...more>> Blackboard Flirts with Buying Pearson's PowerSchool Blackboard has been on an acquisitions roll ever since CEO Jay Bhatt took over in 2012 and decided to go all-in to overhaul its product, brand and strategy. But the Washington, DC-based company may be about to make its biggest bet yet...more>> Testing Backlash Gets Scholarly Support Riding on the growing parental backlash over what's perceived as "over testing" in schools, educational researchers are pushing the White House and Congress to move away from "test-based policies" as they revise and renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA funds public schooling in America...more>> House Education Committee Approves NCLB Rewrite on Party-Line Vote The Republican-controlled House education committee approved an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act Wednesday afternoon on a party-line vote. The measure, which would significantly curtail the footprint of the federal government in K-12 schools, will be considered by the full House the week of Feb. 24...more>> Dear Students: An Apology From A Teacher Dear High School Students in the 21st century, A new semester begins next week and I find myself feeling compelled to apologize to you. Despite our best efforts, we teachers have failed to persuade the people who have the political power to change our public education system, to do so...more>> In Defense of Annual School Testing During a recent hearing by the Senate Education Committee, its Republican chair, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, questioned whether the federal government's annual standardized testing requirement, embodied in the No Child Left Behind law of 2001, may be too much...more>> A Brit's Roundup of Europe's Biggest Education Show: BETT 2015 America has FETC and ISTE; Europe has BETT, held just outside of London each January. With an estimated 40,000 visitors, legions of exhibitors and support staff, BETT is so significant that back in 2013 it even managed to tempt EdSurge CEO, Betsy Corcoran "across the pond."...more>> Is Your First Grader College Ready? What is college? To Madison Comer, a confident 6-year-old, it is a very big place. "It's tall," she explained, outlining the head of Tuffy, the North Carolina State mascot, with a gray crayon. "It's like high school but it's higher."...more>> Everybody hates Pearson John Fallon doesn't look like the devil incarnate. With his ruddy cheeks and cheerful-but-not-too-posh English accent, Fallon, 52, seems more like a buddy from the local pub than the chief executive of a company with $8.2 billion in revenues that is trying to recast global education-and managing to upset a lot of people in the process...more>> Brookings: The 2014 Education Choice and Competition Index Exploring the critical role of school choice in the future of education reform, the Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) is an interactive web application that scores large school districts based on thirteen categories of policy and practice...more>> Is this the K-12 library model of the future? With the increasing presence of tech in schools, the libraries and media centers of old are quickly giving way to learning commons...more>> Blackboard buys K-12 website and app firm Schoolwires Blackboard announced Wednesday the acquisition of SchoolWire, a company that builds and hosts websites and apps in the K-12 space. With the acquisition, Blackboard aims to improve K-12 solutions and services, particularly as it pertains to communication and engagement...more>> Critical Gaps Linger in States' Policies on Postsecondary Readiness, Says Report Despite what it calls the notable progress by states in helping more students reach college- and career-readiness in recent years, there is still much work many states must do to turn a high school diploma into a meaningful accomplishment and not just a "ticket to nowhere."...more>> Are standardized tests the best measure of achievement? As debate on testing reaches a boiling point, NPR's Anya Kamenetz is addressing the issue in a new book, "The Test," which provides historical context for the nation's current testing fever, as well as recommendations for how parents and teachers can stay above the fray...more>> Virtual Schools Bring Real Concerns About Quality At the end of Angela Kohtala's leadership skills course, her high school students have to plan and carry out a community service project. Maybe it's fixing up their school courtyard, or tutoring younger students in an afterschool program...more>> Where School Dollars Go to Waste America spends tons of money on education even though the final product isn't very impressive. If children are indeed the future, then they're certainly an expensive one: Of the $3.2 trillion in total expenditures for local and state governments in 2012, education accounted for nearly 28 percent, or $869.2 billion, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau...more>> Can Students Have Too Much Tech? ...More technology in the classroom has long been a policy-making panacea. But mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education...more>> High Achievers, Tracking, and the Common Core A curriculum controversy is roiling schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the past few months, parents in the San Mateo-Foster City School District, located just south of San Francisco International Airport, voiced concerns over changes to the middle school math program...more>> U.S. Education: Still Separate and Unequal The U.S. spends significantly more on education than other OECD countries. In 2010, the U.S. spent 39 percent more per full-time student for elementary and secondary education than the average for other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to the National Center for Education Statistics...more>> Are digital textbooks worth it? It has been nearly three years since the FCC and Education Secretary Arne Duncan rolled out the Digital Textbook Playbook and challenged schools to go digital within five years. It's safe to say schools are not there yet...more>> Five ways mobile technology is transforming education Technology has been making inroads into education for decades. But the mobile revolution is changing education in more fundamental ways than just providing a new gadget that delivers information. Mobile devices, particularly tablets, are changing the way we learn and think about learning...more>> I pushed my pre-K students toward reading. And I feel guilty about it. It's a Tuesday morning in Room 132, and standing before me is a 4-year-old boy asking for a graham cracker. I'll call him Josue...more>> A Visionary for K-20 In all of edtech, Karen Billings is a deeply respected voice, a driving force in the transformation of education through technology behind the scenes...more>> What Can We Learn from the Dutch? Can Reformist and Teacher Agendas Co-Exist? I was on a bus traveling from Aachen, in Belgium to Maastricht in the Netherlands when I noticed a huge American flag. The bus driver told us it was a United States military cemetery, the grave sites of over 8,000 fallen Americans...more>> Why Annual Statewide Testing Is Critical to Judging School Quality With Congress moving rapidly to revise the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), no issue has proven more contentious than whether the federal government should continue to require that states test all students in math and reading annually in grades three through eight...more>> 5 ed-tech highlights from CES 2015 From robot teachers to "smart" backpacks, CES 2015 had plenty to excite educators...more>> A Country Where Teachers Have a Voice This summer, when the Dutch government debated mandating that all schools provide three hours of physical education a week to students, Jasper Bunt, the principal at a Montessori school called Oog in Al, argued against it...more>> A New Study Reveals Much About How Parents Really Choose Schools ...The most economically disadvantaged students may have parents who are making decisions differently from other families. These parents appear to be more interested in factors other than academic quality as the state defines it...more>> |
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Free online credentials, not MOOCs, will transform higher ed While MOOCs were expected to transform higher education by offering free, high-quality courses to anyone with an internet connection, degrees are what get people jobs, Kevin Carey argues in an excerpt from his new book for the New York Times...more>> An Entrepreneur Sets Out to Do Better at Education Than His College Did When Ben Nelson was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, in the mid-1990s, he volunteered for the annual phone-athon to call admitted students. His job was to persuade them to enroll, and he was relentless in his sales pitch...more>> The Cost of For-Profit Education: How Much is Your Degree Really Worth? This paper examines the latest attempt by the United States Department of Education to enact new regulations for addressing the issue of whether many post-secondary educational program offerings are appropriate in preparing students for gainful employment...more>> Distance Ed Myths Debunked In fall 2013, one in every eight students enrolled at colleges and universities in the U.S. studied exclusively online. One in every four students took at least one online course...more>> Sweet Briar's Demise Is a Cautionary Tale for Other Colleges Among the striking statements that came with the announcement this week of the planned closure of Sweet Briar College were those by the college's president and its Board of Trustees, which painted the decision as inevitable...more>> The profit of nonprofit: Leaders of former for-profits raking in money The New York Times investigated the shift to nonprofit status by a number of private colleges and universities and found that school leadership has earned millions in the process...more>> From Hard Times to Better Times In this third installment of Hard Times, we update our previous analyses of college majors, unemployment, and earnings over the Great Recession using data from 2011 and 20121 to put the past few years into perspective...more>> If B.A.'s Can't Lead Graduates to Jobs, Can Badges Do the Trick? Employers say they are sick of encountering new college graduates who lack job skills. And colleges are sick of hearing that their young alumni aren't employable. Could a new experiment to design employer-approved "badges leave everyone a little less frustrated?...more>> The Unintended Consequences of Borrowing Business Tools to Run a University As colleges and universities compete more vigorously than ever to attract applicants from a smaller population of high-school seniors and strive to provide a deeper, more compelling education, many of us in academic leadership have looked to business practices and concepts to manage our institutions...more>> Blurred Lines: Universities Experiment with For-profit, Nonprofit, and Other Hybrids Most people who know of Alliant International University (AIU) would regard it as a small, primarily graduate and professional studies university serving approximately 4000 students in several campuses throughout California and one site in Mexico...more>> Things to Consider When Developing a Tuition Aid Effort Tuition assistance plans have existed in the United States for roughly half a century. They grew out of the success of the G.I. Bill, which was first created during World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the goal of easing returning veterans back into civilian life...more>> Professors question traditional four-year residential college model One of the greatest presumptions in U.S. higher education is that a traditional undergraduate degree, earned in four years while living on or near campus, is a good way to prepare young people to get a job and become well-rounded thinkers, at least according to Mitchell Stevens...more>> The College Dropout Problem May Not Be as Bad as the Government Says Almost 41 percent of students who start college won't finish, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The data is grim-but it could also be unnecessarily pessimistic...more>> 15 Metrics That Matter About Your Mid-Level Leaders Senior leaders agree the greatest challenge mid-level leaders face is "change." How can you support their development to help them deliver?...more>> How Google and Coursera may upend the traditional college degree Recently, the online education firm Coursera announced a new arrangement with Google, Instagram and other tech firms to launch what some are calling "microdegrees" - a set of online courses plus a hands-on capstone project designed in conjunction with top universities and leading high-tech firms...more>> An Online Kingdom come How Liberty U. Became an Unexpected Model for the Future of Higher Ed...more>> 4 innovations from exceptional community colleges According to a new report, a handful of community colleges across the U.S. are incorporating technology-based innovations that are revolutionizing access to postsecondary education for nontraditional students-and these best practices can be applied to a diverse number of institutions...more>> Mapping the Competency-Based Education Universe Competency-based education (CBE) is gaining momentum, and higher education leaders are taking note of this unique market opportunity. Over the last several weeks, Eduventures has released a series of reports offering objective, relevant, and timely perspectives on this emerging market, including its size, key demand drivers, and a comprehensive landscape of the players, partners, and perspectives impacting its future growth...more>> Why higher education won't solve our economic woes Is it still worth it to go to college? In recent years, this has become a contentious issue. The latest volley comes from Bloomberg, which pointed out last week that the "college premium" - the difference between what workers with a bachelor's degree or higher earn, versus workers with just a two-year degree, some college, or just a high school diploma - was as high as $17,500 for younger workers in 2013...more>> Innovation Is Sweeping Through U.S. Medical Schools Critics have long faulted U.S. medical education for being hidebound, imperious and out of touch with modern health-care needs. The core structure of medical school-two years of basic science followed by two years of clinical work-has been in place since 1910...more>> Are public benefit corporations a new model for for-profit colleges? President Obama's proposal to make community college free was another blow to for-profit higher education providers, according to a recent Forbes article that analyzed the for-profit sector's deep troubles, and a further decline in stock prices after the announcement. In Minnesota, the state Senate's DFL majority leadership also recently proposed free tuition for community college...more>> The 6 Technologies That Will Change the Face of Education Makerspaces, wearable technologies and adaptive learning technologies are three of the six technologies that will have a profound impact on higher education within the next five years, according to the NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition, released Wednesday by the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative...more>> Harvard Business School takes online basics program worldwide For Harvard Business School, this is a big deal, given that it's the first time the program has been offered on such a wide scale. Its content consists of case studies and videos, and it was designed with non-business undergrads in mind as a means of giving them valuable basic business skills for the post-grad job market...more>> 11 online learning demands from today's picky students Online learning enrollment is slowing down. At the same time, student preferences and demands for online courses and degrees are changing. And this is all due to increasing online learning options provided by colleges and universities...more>> 9 coding schools higher ed should keep an eye on Coding schools - programs that teach short courses aimed at professionals in programming and developing online and mobile applications - are growing more popular because of their stripped-down approach to teaching high-demand skills that appeal to employers...more>> Did higher education get these trends right? "Makerspaces" will gain traction long before adaptive learning; and improving digital literacy is a breeze compared to determining how to reward educators for teaching...more>> Teaching twice: The hidden cost of America's education system President Obama offered up an ambitious plan to make the first two years of community college free of charge. It's a highlight of his budget proposal and will be a tent-pole issue of the administration's education policy for 2015. And it would expand access to more people across the country...more>> Three Reasons College Matters for Social Mobility Americans have been getting better educated in the last half-century, but class gaps in post-secondary educational attainment have widened. There are bigger gaps in terms of who attends college, who completes college, and how students pay for college, as shown in a recent report from the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in High Education...more>> The Rich Man's Dropout Club Whatever happened to the teenage entrepreneurs whom Peter Thiel paid to forgo college?...more>> Reinventing Ourselves Since the spring of 2010, our sector has been on a downward spiral both in new students and reputation. I believe it would be useful to examine how we fell and how we get back up to do a better job for our students (page 42)...more>> 2015: A New Beginning The need for career education will never be supplanted (page 12)...more>> Getting Credit for What You Know A range of job sectors are now offering certifications to students who pass tests that measure their competency in practical skills...more>> 3 Things Academic Leaders Believe About Online Education The Babson Survey Research Group released its annual online-education survey on Thursday. The Babson surveyors, Jeffrey Seaman and I. Elaine Allen, have been tracking online higher education since 2002, soliciting responses from chief academic officers at thousands of institutions...more>> University Of Phoenix's Risk-Free Trial Might Not Cost You, But Is It An Accurate Taste Of College? From diet pills to dating websites, it's not hard to find someone offering a "risk-free" trial membership, and thanks to the University of Phoenix, that "try before you buy" model now applies to college courses. But while one might admire the idea of giving potential students a taste of the school before committing to an expensive education at the for-profit online university, consumer advocates are concerned about the program's benefits...more>> Half of High-risk Students Coming Up Empty Roughly half of high-risk students are starting college but have nothing to show for it in terms of earnings because they leave without a credential that could command a higher salary...more>> The Widening Income Gap in Higher Education-and What to Do About It The good news, according to a research report out on Tuesday is that the college-going gap between students from rich and poor families has narrowed somewhat since 1970. The truly devastating news? The gap in bachelor's completion by family income has roughly doubled in those years. What's going on? And what can be done to remedy the problem?...more>> Experts Debate Graduation Rates for Online Students Studies show online students may have lower completion rates than on-campus students, but the data are complex...more>> The Credit Hour Is Here to Stay, at Least for Now The Carnegie Unit has been around for more than a century, and unless someone can come up with a better way of tracking college credit, it won't be going anywhere anytime soon. It presents challenges, but it has value because it sets minimum instructional standards...more>> Higher Education Is Not a Mixtape Economists predict that colleges will soon become "unbundled" by the Internet. But that won't-and shouldn't-happen...more>> 5 pros and cons of Obama's free community college plan President Barack Obama announced his free community college plan to the nation last week, and the first wave of critics and advocates have had their say...more>> Do Undergraduate Majors Matter? ...data from two recent Eduventures alumni surveys suggests that what students study at the undergraduate level and their ability to get a related job may matter after all, impacting both career satisfaction and how alumni feel toward their institution...more>> Is this the online learning model of the future? A new generation of students already familiar with an online learning format are eagerly signing up in droves for an online education model that optimizes one characteristic above all others: flexibility...more>> A Quiet Revolution in Helping Lift the Burden of Student Debt This might seem an absurd question. Student loan debt is at a record high of $1.1 trillion, and the average undergraduate who borrows to attend school graduates nearly $30,000 in debt. Almost 20 percent of student borrowers are in default...more>> Has online higher ed stopped growing? The most recent figures available from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics show that the number of students taking online postsecondary courses in the U.S. has essentially stopped growing...more>> Eduventures' 2015 Higher Ed Predictions: A year to Face Reality By nearly every measure, 2014 was a challenging year for higher education. Enrollments fell for the third consecutive year, funding to public institutions in 48 states remained flat or declined, and operating costs rose. We also saw an unprecedented increase in federal oversight, with heightened attention paid to the issue of access and affordability...more>> Top 10 Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2015 The mood of public higher education entering the 2015 state legislative sessions might be described as a blend of tepid optimism and restrained anxiety. The economic turbulence of the Great Recession has subsided, with dramatic state funding reductions giving way to the long slog toward funding restoration...more>> Online, Size Doesn't Matter Conventional wisdom (backed by many research studies) holds that students benefit from smaller classes. They receive more personal attention from instructors, who can spend more time evaluating each assignment turned in and can spend more time with each student...more>> Things Colleges Can Expect From Congress in 2015 When the 114th Congress convenes, on Tuesday, Republicans will control the Senate for the first time in eight years. In the House of Representatives, they'll have their largest majority since 1928. What does that mean for higher education?...more>> The Most Important Higher Ed Story of 2015 The most important higher education story of 2015 will, ironically, be a story published at the end of 2014. This is the 12/26 NYT's story by Richard Prichard Pérez-Peña Colleges Reinvent Classes to Keep More Students in Science...more>> Study Reveals New Challenges for Online College Administrators Online education has gone from a rarity offered by few programs to a normal part of college operations. Yet university administrators are now facing new challenges in producing online degree programs that attract and keep students...more>> How might these 6 for-profit institutions fare in 2015? What will 2015 bring for the for-profit college industry? A major factor in the prognosis will be federal regulation. While a Republican-controlled Congress should help block an aggressive regulatory push by the Obama administration, the U.S...more>> Should the Government Rate Our Colleges? That's been a question ever since the summer of 2013, when President Obama announced the Department of Education's new plan to score American colleges-a source of intense controversy in the world of higher ed that could explode again in the days ahead, as the department gets set to release a draft of the metrics that will be used to calculate federal college ratings...more>> 13 higher ed tech tools and approaches to watch in 2015 Higher education technology businesses can get lost in the weeds after their launch has passed and they're no longer in the startup or seed funding mode. College administrators and their IT staffs can labor in relative anonymity as they try to improve their learning technology and approaches for students...more>> Reimagine College Sometimes things change dramatically and quite quickly in our daily world. When was the last time you used a travel agent to book a flight? Have you ever told your kids about the days, not so long ago, before cell phones? Or about life before texting?...more>> Ed Dept issues competency-based education guidance A letter published Friday by the U.S. Department of Education details regulations on direct assessment and competency-based education programs...more>> Experimenting with Competency The U.S. Department of Education will allow at least 40 colleges to experiment with competency-based education and prior learning assessment, granting them a waiver from certain rules that govern federal financial aid...more>> |
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Can You Count to $2B? Edtech Investment Hits New Record Education technology is a weird little industry. But you may never fully appreciate exactly how weird until you start to dig into the numbers for 2014-a record year for investment in edtech companies...more>> American Millennials Not Terribly Bright When It Comes to Pretty Much Everything That Matters, Analysis Finds Forget about the PISA results that show how poorly American 15-year-olds do against students in other countries when solving real-world problems in math, reading and science. What about the Millennials?...more>> Partisan Winds Loom for Some GOP Governors In three states long dominated by Democrats, a trio of new Republican governors are testing the limits of their political clout with potentially divisive K-12 initiatives and tough budget proposals that could significantly affect public schools...more>> How To Recognize (And Overcome) Your Unconscious Biases In Hiring If you have a brain, you're automatically biased. Here's how you can prevent this thinking from affecting your decision-making...more>> Ivy League For Free: What One Man Learned By Crashing Elite Colleges For 4 Years Between 2008 and 2012, Guillaume Dumas took courses at some of the best colleges in North America-Stanford, Yale, Brown, University of California Berkeley, McGill, and University of British Columbia, among others-without being enrolled as a student...more>> Adaptive Learning Tops Strategic Tech List for Education Even as education spending is projected to inch up two percent this year to reach $67.8 billion worldwide, the way in which school districts, colleges and universities are spending that money is evolving to reflect the growing digital nature of teaching and learning, according to Gartner...more>> Evolution of early-college high schools Ninth graders in North Carolina take all their classes on the campus of a major state university. Early-college high school students in Connecticut can gain an inside track to one of the world's largest tech companies...more>> Wearable Computer Market Will Grow 38 Percent in 2015 In a recent interview, Annette Zimmermann, research director at technology research company Gartner, shared her outlook for the wearable computer market in 2015 and beyond...more>> 5 Lessons Education Research Taught Us In 2014 Studies, research papers, doctoral dissertations, conference presentations - each year academia churns out thousands of pieces of research on education. And for many of them, that's the end of it. They gather dust in the university library or languish in some forgotten corner of the Internet...more>> Fast, Fair and Open: FCC Proclaims Internet a Utility The Federal Communications Commission today chose to keep the Internet open. In a three-two vote split down party lines, the FCC officially reclassified broadband Internet as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act. The new "Open Internet Order" will ban paid prioritization, blocking and throttling, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a statement...more>> Recruiting Better Talent With Brain Games And Big Data The job interview hasn't changed much over the years. There are the resumes, the face-to-face meetings, the callbacks - and the agonizing wait, as employers decide based on a hunch about who's best suited for the job. Some companies are selling the idea that new behavioral science techniques can give employers more insight into hiring...more>> K-12, Higher Education Worlds Must Collide to Improve Student Outcomes In the current debate in Springfield, Ill., and in the capitals of other cash-strapped states around the country, one major area of budget focus is education. Legislators and educators at all levels worry that budgets at one level (K-12 or higher education) will be reduced so that budgets at the other level can be sustained or increased...more>> How to Break the Expert's Curse Experts could be our most powerful teachers-but often they've lost the ability to connect with novices. Research by Ting Zhang reveals how experts can rediscover the experience of inexperience...more>> These are the best college majors if you actually want a job after graduation Wondering what to major in? If you're a college student wondering what you'll do after you graduate, it might be good to know that young workers with degrees in agriculture, mining, teaching and medicine are in high demand. So are those who studied physics or chemistry...more>> Do the Loudest 'Expert' Voices on Education Have the Least Expertise? A new study, published in the journal Education Policy Analysis Archives, explores the relationship between expertise in educational research and the likelihood of playing a role in news-media debates over education policy...more>> The Death of the 9-to-5: Why We'll All Work Flex Schedules Soon Several months ago, I was talking to a college senior about her career plans. She wanted a job with flexible hours, and I asked why. The young woman said she wanted the freedom to take a short nap right after lunch when her energy flagged the most and the ability to work late at night when her brain was sharpest...more>> The 22-Hour Interview: Best Hiring Decision Ever Or Total Waste Of Time? One tech company devotes roughly 22 hours to vetting each hire. They even have a person who studies body language. Is it worth it?...more>> Video Training Is Hot Looking to close the digital skills gap? You might find your answer in 60- to 90-second videos, the newest bite-sized learning delivery trend...more>> Private Equity Firms Return Record Amounts to Investors The private equity industry is returning record amounts of cash to investors, marking one of the most successful periods ever for the asset class, according to figures from data provider Preqin. Globally, the industry distributed an all-time high of $580 billion to investors in 2013, according to the 2015 Preqin Global Private Equity & Venture Capital Report...more>> America's Skills Challenge: Millennials and the Future Recent research reveals an apparent paradox for U.S. millennials (born after 1980, ages 16-34): while they may be on track to be our most educated generation ever, they consistently score below many of their international peers in literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments...more>> Business, University Venture to Test Ed-Tech Products An ambitious new commercial project aims to use the combined might of private investment and academic research to rigorously test educational technology products and share the results with schools and colleges hungry for objective information on which products best meet their needs...more>> Michael Chasen's view of net neutrality from inside the White House Back in October, the White House hosted a secret meeting with heads of various technology companies, including Etsy, Kickstarter Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Tumblr, in an effort to gain a better understanding of the issues around net neutrality, according to the Wall Street Journal...more>> What's the purpose of education in the 21st century? ...The question came into stark relief when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently tried to quietly change the century-old mission of the University of Wisconsin system by proposing to remove words in the state code that command the university to "search for truth" and "improve the human condition" and replacing them with "meet the state's workforce needs."...more>> No profit left behind In the high-stakes world of American education, Pearson makes money even when its results don't measure up...more>> Trends: For Edtech, No Slowing Down Funding to education technology companies showed no signs of a slowdown in 2014, according to data from CB Insights, a leading tracker of high growth companies and investment activity...more>> Professional Networking Makes People Feel Dirty Francesca Gino and colleagues find that people avoid professional networking-even though it's good for their careers-because it makes them feel physically dirty...more>> The dawn of marketing's new golden age Marketers are boosting their precision, broadening their scope, moving more quickly, and telling better stories...more>> We're Destroying Higher Education for Future Generations I read the news last week...oh boy...On Wednesday, the New York Times asked, "Is Your First Grader College Ready?"...more>> Disruptors Sell What Customers Want and Let Competitors Sell What They Don't By "decoupling" activities that consumers value from the ones they don't, enterprising digital startups are wreaking havoc on established firms. Thales Teixeira discusses his research on the second wave of Internet disruption...more>> Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018 Landmark report shows where the jobs will be, by education level, occupation and industry through 2018, and how postsecondary education is increasingly essential to middle class earnings...more>> Leadership Skills In High Demand And Other Workforce Innovation News, 2/4 Leadership development is in the news again this week, pinpointed as the only competency to make the "most needed" and "least possessed" list in a recent report by the Institute of Management Accountants and APQC Research. The report, Competency Crisis, also forecasts that unfilled positions and a mounting workload will create a vicious job turnover cycle for talent in the finance sector...more>> Mentor Your Millennials Stop blaming secondary education for the Gen Y skills gap and take charge of the problem with these mentoring techniques...more>> How Learning Will Work in the Near Future: 12 Features of Next-Gen Platforms Following are 12 components of next-gen learning and 12 development vectors, groups of organizations on a similar path to next-gen learning, and 12 suggestions for philanthropies that want to accelerate progress...more>> Well Prepared in Their Own Eyes It turns out that college students are being well-prepared for their future careers -- at least in their own minds. Ask employers, and it's a very different picture...more>> Rebuilding Your Career After a Move to Quit Talk about awkward. You quit your job to join a rival company-and then are persuaded to stay on. Returning to work with the same bosses and colleagues you were ready to abandon can be a minefield...more>> Are You a Manager or a Leader? Over the past 15 years of building my real estate business, I've come to learn there's a huge difference between managers and leaders. Too often these words are used interchangeably. I've seen managers who are, in fact, leaders and so-called business leaders who are really nothing more than managers....more>> Test Finds College Graduates Lack Skills for White-Collar Jobs Four in 10 U.S. college students graduate without the complex reasoning skills to manage white-collar work, according to the results of a test of nearly 32,000 students. The test, which was administered at 169 colleges and universities in 2013 and 2014 and released Thursday, reveals broad variation in the intellectual development of the nation's students depending on the type and even location of the school they attend...more>> Learning: Nice to Have or Indispensable Business Asset? Most people like learning new things, but without accountability for improved performance back on the job, learning will always be vulnerable and its value questioned...more>> These 7 ed tech companies were among 2014's biggest funding winners Education technology companies raised a record $1.36 billion from venture capital investors in 2014, up from $1.2 billion in 2013. Will the trend continue in 2015? It may be possible to make a prediction within the next few months...more>> Silicon Valley Turns Its Eye to Education The education technology business is chock-full of fledgling companies whose innovative ideas have not yet proved effective - or profitable. But that is not slowing investors, who are pouring money into ventures as diverse as free classroom-management apps for teachers and foreign language lessons for adult learners...more>> The 9 Best Ideas From CES 2015 The Consumer Electronics Show brings tens of thousands of new products to our shelves. Here are the nine you actually need to know about...more>> 5 prediction for education in 2015 It's the new year and with it, hopes for new developments in education. Here are a few scattered predictions from around the world of education about what we might see. 1. Competency-based learning gains steam...more>> SUMMING UP: What Are the Limits On Workplace Transparency? What Isn't Off Limits When it Comes to Transparency? The discussion of this month's column on corporate transparency to employees made it clear that we have reached a point at which disclosure of pay information in organizations is no longer much of an issue...more>> According To Joberate The Median Employed Job Seeking American Leaves Their Current Employer For A New Opportunity In Less Than 120 Days Joberate, a leader in tracking and measuring workforce job seeking behavior, recently conducted analysis of its U.S. job seeking behavior data, which shows that the median currently employed American leaves their current employer within 119.6 days of a measurable increase in their job seeking behavior, their J-Score...more>> What Will the Learning Device of the Future Look Like? We asked a young innovator, a futurist and the CEO of the One-to-One Institute to imagine what students will be using for learning one day. Here are their predictions, from the fantastical to the practical...more>> What is Google doing to your brain? If you're anything like me, you feel a little better about yourself after reading a physical book-almost as if you did something healthy. But if I spend an equal amount of time browsing the internet, even if I'm reading some informative long-form journalism, I feel a bit as if I'm wasting time, and inevitably get distracted by a sidebar link about an iPhone case that can call the police...more>> Kindergarten Entry Tests And More Education Predictions for 2015 In 2014 we've covered education as the world-changing story it is and you've been along for the ride. And so at year's end, NPR Ed reached far and wide to bring you a set of provocative predictions for the education world in 2015...more>> How Asia is Emerging as the World's Edtech Laboratory If the US is the world's education technology leader, Asia is fast becoming its most critical testing ground. The reasons are unambiguous: Asia has the world's largest pool of K-12 and college enrollments with acute needs for further educational access; deep internet and social media penetration; hypercompetitive examination systems and a wide dispersion of household affordability...more>> LinkedIn Proves the U.S. Has a Stem Problem At first, the numbers appear reassuring-the U.S. remains the top destination for foreign science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals. But lurking deeper in the data is a second, troubling statistic: Fewer of these bright workers are migrating to the U.S. each year...more>> How to Build Global Leaders Most curriculum to develop global leadership skills and competencies focuses on the same points: developing and executing strategic business plans; communicating and working effectively with diverse internal and external colleagues and customers; and dealing with change, complexity and uncertainty in a confident manner...more>> At Work, Emotional Intelligence Pays When it comes to achieving career success, emotional intelligence probably isn't the first trait that jumps to mind. Particularly in Silicon Valley, where technical, intrapersonal skills are so celebrated that industry leaders are increasingly self-diagnosing themselves as autistic, the ability to decipher other peoples' emotions is often dismissed as a fringe benefit...more>> Pearson Overtakes Saudi Arabian Education System This June 24, 2014, article is from Innovation Africa Kigali, Rwanda. It seems that Pearson-- which already "has a significant presence in Saudi Arabia"-- has "pledged its support for a new education initiative" in Saudi Arabia...more>> Most Popular Articles and Research Papers of 2014 Why do handsome men attract VC dollars? Why can red shoes improve your effectiveness at work? Why do outlet stores exist? These topics were among the ingredients that made up the most popular articles on Harvard Business School Working Knowledge in 2014...more>> A Basic Structure for a VP, Sales Comp Plan: 50/50/25+ One key post I missed on the VP Sales journey was how to pay this critical role. I don't think it's necessarily as nuanced and interesting a topic as how to pay and scale the sales team itself, or how to hire for this role...more>> Curriculum of the Future: How Digital Content is Changing Education K-20 education institutions are increasingly shifting to digital curriculum at the same time they adopt mobile devices and improve access to wireless networks. While these changes show promise of significantly advancing student achievement, there are also challenges associated with such widespread change...more>> The Messy Minds of Creative People Creativity is very messy. According to one prominent theory, the creative process involves four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. This is all well and good in theory. In reality, the creative process often feels like this...more>> Why Technology Has Failed To Revolutionise Education Our reaction to Derek Muller's claims that technology hasn't revolutionised education and will continue not to...more>> What is Google doing to your brain? If you're anything like me, you feel a little better about yourself after reading a physical book-almost as if you did something healthy. But if I spend an equal amount of time browsing the internet, even if I'm reading some informative long-form journalism, I feel a bit as if I'm wasting time, and inevitably get distracted by a sidebar link about an iPhone case that can call the police...more>> |
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