Our Blog: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Education

Blog Feed

Posts by Pete Fishman

Teaching Practice

This weekend, the Times ran a story on legal training that echoed recent reports on the shortcomings of teacher education.  In it, David Segal writes: Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful, with classes that are often overstuffed with antiquated distinctions, like the variety of property law in post-feudal England. Professors are rewarded for chin-stroking scholarship, like law review articles with titles like “A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise of Postmodern […] Read more

DVR Unplugged

From New York City to Nevada, the heat is on teacher tenure.  Predictably, the Times quotes NEA President Dennis Van Roekel pushing back against the momentum.  However, in so doing, Van Roekel asks a great question: “Why aren’t governors standing up and saying, ‘In our state, we’ll devise a system where nobody will ever get into a classroom who isn’t competent’?”  (Nevermind that tenure is supposed to be a system that at […] Read more

Summit 2011: What’s New? What’s Next?

The first NewSchools Summit took place in Silicon Valley in October 1999. That gathering brought together 200 education entrepreneurs to learn from each other and discuss ways to build ventures that would provide excellent educational opportunities for all children. Eleven years later, talk of education innovation is everywhere – from network television to blogosphere debates to the State of the Union address. A new generation of entrepreneurs is seeking disruptive ways to […] Read more

Learning to Teach … Better

Earlier this month, when the Tennessee state board of education released data showing that teachers trained by Teach For America were among the most effective new teachers in the state, the blogosphere sounded off with the familiar strains of a TFA debate. Critics searched for ways to discredit the report’s conclusions and boosters enthusiastically called for TFA to take over all of teacher training. This debate misses the point.  Whether through recruitment, […] Read more

More Heat than Light

For evidence that the terrain has shifted for education entrepreneurs, one need look no further than last week’s much-publicized hearing convened by State Senator Bill Perkins (D-Harlem) in downtown Manhattan. In what has been described as hours of “volatile” and “testy” debate, supporters and opponents of New York charter schools traded barbs over charges of fiscal mismanagement and corruption in some charter schools. At one point during the marathon hearing, New York State Deputy […] Read more