January 11, 2011 – 10:46 pm
Dr. Don Glines has poured his energy, extensive experience and knowledge of research about learning into this extraordinary article, “100 Years Against Learning.” He likens the actual 100 Years War to the more than 100 years during which schools have ignored learning principles. He asks why do we still have, for example, seventh graders. He says [...]
January 8, 2011 – 9:27 pm
The International Association for Learning Alternatives (IALA) has shifted its focus from conferences to policy advocacy with a Position Paper outlining broad concepts to advance educational alternatives. The National Association for Alternative Education (NAEA) has recently endorsed the IALA Position Paper as have several state associations. NAEA is a growing membership organization that holds an [...]
December 28, 2010 – 3:01 pm
California’s “parent trigger ” law enacted in 2010 permits parents with a 51% vote in a failing school to either close the school, replace the school’s administrators, replace the school’s teachers, or convert the school into a charter. Making the news, parents at McKinley Elementary School in Compton California voted 60% to transform their school [...]
December 28, 2010 – 12:12 pm
Marc Prensky, originator of the terms digital native and digital immigrant, writes that today’s education reformers miss the most important ingredient for education change, namely the curriculum. He states, reformers speak of the importance of teachers and principals, methods of instruction, length of the day and year, teacher preparation and other factors but assume the conventional [...]
December 2, 2010 – 3:59 pm
The National Center on School Choice conducts scholarly research on school choice including such topics as: charter schools, magnet schools, voucher programs, private schools and inter/intra distict choice. The center located at Vanderbilt University is funded ($13.5 million) by the USDE Institute of Education Sciences since 2004 with partners among others at Brown, Harvard, Indiana, Notre Dame and Stanford [...]
October 27, 2010 – 2:11 pm
Attempts at circumventing conventional licensing have led to the availability of alternative certification, that is programs for becoming licensed to teach or administer without going through the traditional sequence. A valuable resource for examining this route is www.educationdegree.com and then clicking on Alternative Certification. This continually updated website of 1,700 colleges and school districts contains valuable time-saving information including B.A, M.A and [...]
September 26, 2010 – 10:00 pm
TED brings the world’s leaders in various field: Sugata Mitra invented the “hole in the wall” project with astonishing learning results, then continued the experiment around the world with the same impact. It can’t help but cause us to question conventional ideas about the ability of children to learn. His 17 minute talk at TED [...]
September 26, 2010 – 8:37 pm
100s of charter school studies have assessed the viability of the movement particularly on student achievement as measured by standardized tests. One study shows charter schools students do better than comparison groups, another shows they are about the same, another shows charter school students do poorer than comparison groups. Two major criticisms of these studies [...]
September 5, 2010 – 10:10 am
Dan Daly, executive director of IALA wrote recently of the organization’s efforts to impact state and national policy: This past June, IALA hosted the Tri-State Alternatives Leadership Summit in Bloomington and formed The IALA Coalition for Innovative Education. Leaders from the following ten organizations participated; IALA, MN Association of Alternative Programs, IA Association of Alternative [...]
September 4, 2010 – 3:52 pm
Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard and well known for his books including Multiple Intelligences and Five Minds for the Future, writes of the importance of a variety of educational programs to fit different students. In a recent article, he writes that after studying various approaches such as Reggio Emilia (a program he particularly [...]
What effect is the current standards movement and teaching to the test having on our students? What do you know about how students at your school view the school environment? Now your school can find out by seeing the school from the eyes of your students based on their responses on the Hope Survey. This [...]
August 4, 2010 – 10:37 am
“Prologue to Revolution,” a seven page report by Francis Duffy, lists four “industrial-age” paradigms hampering school change, describes why they persist in the face of evidence to the contrary, and asks about the reader’s beliefs as a road to action. This readable piece provides a compelling argument for school transformation and suggests avenues for its [...]