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Bay Area Leading the Learning Revolution

Computers, then smart phones, then tablets changed how we engaged the world. Medical technology extended and entertainment technology enriched our lives. Energy saving technology made our lifestyles more sustainable. Bay Area entrepreneurs developed many of these disruptive technologies.New York and Boston are home to the publishers; metro D.C. is home to the giants of learning online. But the Bay Area is poised to lead the learning revolution.San Francisco is home to innovating […] Read more

Grockit Raises Money for Online Test Prep

About half of students who take the SAT do nothing to prepare. Grockit, an education start-up, wants to change that by making test prep social and taking it online.On Monday, Grockit announced that it raised $7 million in venture capital, for a total of $24 million, from GSV Capital and NewSchools Venture Fund, which invests philanthropic donations in education businesses and nonprofit organizations.[Read the entire post at The New York Times] Read more

BetterLesson Grabs $1.6 Million to Let Educators Find and Share the Best Lesson Plans

Since launching, BetterLesson has attracted a community of “tens of thousands of educators”,according to the company’s blog post, and has collected hundreds of thousands K-12 lesson plans. Last year, KIPP, the 112-school charter network, joined the platform and helped the team “develop a suite of premium features” for schools. In less than a year, the site’s paying customers have grown to over 200 schools.To help it grow, the startup has announced that it […] Read more

NewSchools CEO Ted Mitchell: My Best Idea For K-12 Education

America’s school system is broken. On that the Forbes 400 can agree. America’s richest men and women give more to education-related causes than to any other issue. But in terms of how best to improve education, there is less consensus.Education-related causes that have benefited from the Forbes 400 wealth vary widely: Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Newark’s public schools. Michael Moritz and his wife gave $50 million to his alma-mater Christ Church college. […] Read more

The Intersection of Technology and Test Scores

“In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores” blared the headline in New York Times on September 4th. The paper’s editors decided that the top-of-the-fold story on Page 1 also warranted two full pages inside, plus four color photos and a graph. That’s a huge part of the news hole on any day, but particularly on Sunday, when circulation is at its highest.The long piece is worth reading, but at the end of […] Read more

The Super-Connected Classroom: Experiments in Ingenuity From the Ground Up

When Chris Lehmann, principal of the technology-rich Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, wanted to give teachers feedback on their lessons last year, he turned to his iPad. Lehmann wanted to deliver comments to teachers faster than typing them into Microsoft Word documents would allow. So he started entering compliments, critiques, and notes into teachers’ personal Google spreadsheets as he observed them, triggering instant alerts in their email inboxes.“It led to wonderful dialogue […] Read more

Charter Operators Face Challenges in ‘Scaling Up’

The pace at which the highest-performing charter-management organizations are “scaling up” is being determined largely by how rapidly they can develop and hire strong leaders and acquire physical space, and by the level of support they receive for growth from city or state policies, say leaders from some charter organizations viewed by advocates as successful.From the 1999-2000 to 2008-09 school years, the number of students enrolled in charter schools more than tripled, […] Read more

Unlocking the Secrets of High-Performing Charters

Charter schools are approaching the ripe old age of 20. Although more work remains if we are to fully understand this complex education reform “movement,” a growing body of data and research is being compiled about its strengths, weaknesses, and impact. An important subset of the charter school sector is just now receiving a similar level of scrutiny. Charter management organizations (CMOs) are integrated networks of charter schools that came on the […] Read more

Federal Teacher-Training Bill Echoes N.Y. Regulations

Big news today on the teacher-training front, as colleague Alyson Klein reports over at the Politics K-12 blog. In essence, a bill introduced by three U.S. senators would create a new program to aid states to set up an authority to approve teacher-preparation “academies.” Such academies could be within or outside of higher education, would serve high-needs schools and subjects, have high entry standards, require a yearlong “residency” or in-school apprenticeship, and require […] Read more

Opinion: A revolution in training teachers

An impassioned national debate has erupted around what were once considered arcane matters deep inside the education world: How teachers’ skills should be judged, how to help less-skilled teachers get better and what to do if they don’t. But there are two points where pretty much everyone agrees: quality of teaching matters more than anything else, and we need to do the work that can put a strong teacher in every classroom. […] Read more