Pathbrite and readImagine: the cool ideas that didn’t get on the TODAY Show

Even if you didn’t see the TODAY show last Wednesday, you’ve probably heard a good bit about the winners of the Innovation Challenge, the contest NewSchools ran last week in partnership with Citi and NBC News as part of the three-day Education Nation programming. You may have heard less about the two runners-up, and that’s […]

Who said it? Teachers Union Leader or Ed Tech Entrepreneur?

Even a handful of years ago, the scene would have been improbable: the leaders of the two major teachers unions sitting down to a serious conversation with education technology entrepreneurs about innovation and reform in the shadow of the Democratic National Convention. Yet that was what happened yesterday, at an event in Charlotte, NC organized […]

What America thinks about education, 2012 edition

There’s a big problem with public education in this country, but it doesn’t affect my kid.  If you had to boil down this year’s PDK Gallup poll – probably the most influential survey of American attitudes on education – down to a sentence, that might be it. But there’s much more to learn here, particularly […]

What does a moon shot in education mean?

Lately, leaders seeking to describe a bold effort to make massive change have used the metaphor of the moon shot, notably including Arne Duncan, early in his tenure as  Secretary of Education. At the outset of the stimulus, the moon mission offered an apt metaphor for reaching a goal that has long seemed unreachable, through […]

Bill Clinton takes on innovation in education at KIPP’s Summit

Bill Clinton’s best speeches invariably are the ones where he travels easily and expertly between disciplines and fields of ideas. On Thursday, Clinton gave one of those stunners, at the KIPP School Summit in Orlando, Florida.   KSS, as it’s typically called, brings together thousands of teachers from throughout KIPP—the biggest high-performing charter network in […]

Teachers, Reformers and the “Real Fight”

Education reform hardly qualifies as the most exciting news with an Aspen dateline this week. In fact, the Aspen Ideas Festival* didn’t even have an official education track this year. But that didn’t keep the Festival – an annual gathering that represents the high-altitude pinnacle of influential thinking –from making news in the education world.  […]

Who’s an Education Entrepreneur?

Jason Tomassini, a talented scribe who’s just joined the ink-stained ranks at Ed Week, alerted those of us who were asleep last weekend to a “spat” between Diane Ravitch, the education historian with the itchy Twitter finger, and Justin Hamilton, spokesman for the US Department of Ed. In the dustup, a mostly honorable group got […]

Summit 2012

“While the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period… [Between 1970 and 2007,] the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent … while the gap between white and black students, regardless […]

Grading the New York Times on Education Technology

This morning, the New York Times had the latest in its occasional series, “Wouldn’t It Be Nicer If There Were No Technology in Schools” –wait, sorry, I read it wrong, the correct title is “Grading the Digital School.” The piece, titled “Teachers Resist High-Tech Push in Idaho Schools,” reveals that a new law in Idaho […]

#takethetest

It’s not often that I wake up in the morning, read the blogs, and find a whole lot of common ground with Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” in the Washington Post. On days when she is quoting the New York Times’ Michael Winerip, it’s even less likely. So, in the holiday spirit of cheer and peacemaking, […]