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The Latest GREAT News

The ayes have it! Last Thursday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee approved Senator Michael Bennet’s GREAT Amendment to the omnibus ESEA reauthorization bill by voice vote. (For more background on GREAT, you can read previous blog posts here, here and here – the essential idea is to improve teacher and principal training by focusing on admissions selectivity, clinical training, and accountability tied to student achievement.)For those who weren’t riveted […] Read more

Overcoming the Beta-Test Blues

The brainy, out-of-touch computer geek has long been a sitcom archetype. From Doogie to Leonard and Sheldon, these intelligent yet hapless characters’ struggles to communicate with normal folks is a source of amusement.But these delightful storylines about experts frustrated by the need to occasionally communicate their esoteric knowledge with the laypeople in their lives hyperbolizes a challenge recognized by many real life ed-tech entrepreneurs.Most developers realize that their chances of building a (commercially […] Read more

Drone Submarines, Flying Cars, and the Classroom

What does education have in common with a pilotless submarine and remote-controlled insects?In short, the letters ARPA. Stay with us for a moment — because we’re going to need your help.In 1953, Congress created DARPA — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — to catch up with a Soviet Union that could turn innovation into workable defense projects faster than the United States could. It was idea-heavy and bureaucracy-light, freed from the […] Read more

Mapping the K-12 Ed Tech Market

When Amerigo Vespucci made a map that showed how to find North America, people liked it so much they named the place after him.Having now finished up a map of the known world in education technology, with generous support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, we are not expecting to find it in any history books. But we were delighted, when we released it yesterday at a meeting of the Philanthropy […] Read more