February 28, 2010 – 7:57 pm
High Schoolers have many more options today then they did even a decade ago. There are Alternative, Charter, Private and On-Line options, and now there are options in many states to graduate early or if necessaryto stay one, two or even three additional years. Recently both the New York Times and U.S. Today had articles [...]
February 15, 2010 – 11:01 am
Schools have been involved in environmental education and the “Green Movement” for nearly 40 years now, but now with advances in technology and connections with the internet schools and students are able to connect, create and learn in ways that were not possible in the past. Several sites of interest are available that either directly [...]
January 13, 2010 – 4:11 pm
Here are a couple of very interesting and extensive articles on graduation rates and the need to promote graduation for all students. The first article talks mostly about the graduation gap between the upper 2/3 of high school students and the lower 1/3, made up mostly of urban, low-income African American and Latino students. The [...]
January 4, 2010 – 3:22 am
Mark your calendar for any of the following conferences about alternatives of interest to you or colleagues.
The Washington Association for Learning Alternatives will hold its 35th annual conference March 4-6, 2010 in Ocean Shores, WA.
The Connecticut Association of Alternative Schools and Programs will hold its 32th annual conference March 24, 2010 in New Britain, CT.
The [...]
November 9, 2009 – 6:44 pm
There’s little doubt that the Internet will transform schooling (read choices) and how students learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. A newly-created Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California-Irvine will explore the impact of digital media on learning and its potential for transforming education. The Center is funded by a $2.97 million grant from [...]
September 15, 2009 – 4:21 pm
David Bly, former President of the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs and a co-founder of IALA has written a powerful booklet, The Middle Class Amendment, which you can read online. Bly, a Representative from Northfield, is a member of the Minnesota Legislature. While IALA does not make political endorsements, we think the topic of interest to alternative educators [...]
September 2, 2009 – 8:46 pm
The technology revolution has entered into every part of our lives, and now it seems that the implications for education are about to bring major changes to the way students and indeed all of us learn and gain information. There are a multitude of options for students of all ages to gather and disseminate [...]
August 26, 2009 – 11:41 am
After school budgets, testing remains one of the most controversial and talked about subjects among administrators, teachers, parents and students. Edutopia has an interesting article along with several links regarding the future of standardized testing. The article Reinventing the BIG test http://www.edutopia.org/reinventing-big-test-the-challenge-of-authentic-assessment gives examples of several promising alternative assessments to the standardized multiple choice tests that [...]
Since the early 1990s when the nation’s first charter school was opened in St. Paul, MN, the scope and availability of school-based options to parents has steadily expanded in the U.S. and abroad. No longer can traditional education be a public monopoly. Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice (NCSC), this 648 page ($115) Handbook of [...]
Several helpful documents are available for describing, implementing and evaluating alternative education programs. The first three refer to alternative education broadly, that is, providing a choice of programs for all students. The last one is more attuned to at-risk students.
Ray Morley and the Iowa Association of Alternative Education prepared a thoughtful document, Alternative Learning Environments: [...]
February 26, 2009 – 5:01 pm
Here are useful resources with links to other sites:
Brief descriptions in Summary of Educational Models include: Accelerated Schools, America’s Choice, Big Picture, Communities in Schools, EdVisions, Job Corps, Youth Build and 17 more.
The Alternative High School Initiative (AHSI) is a network of youth development organizations with over 258 sites nationwide for creating educational opportunities for [...]
January 11, 2009 – 1:01 pm
We recently created the outline below showing the kinds of choices available to students in some parts of Minnesota. This may be similar to other states. By no means are all of these alternatives available to all students in all places but it represents a major shift in what parents had to choose from in [...]
January 8, 2009 – 12:14 pm
The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled showed a significant increase from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007 according to a U.S. Department of Education report. The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 36% since 2003. The report identified seven reasons parents give as their motivation for home-schooling [...]
December 6, 2008 – 5:21 pm
The U. S. Department of Education’s Office of Voluntary Public School Choice program supports States and school districts in efforts to establish or expand a public school choice program. It supports efforts to establish or expand intradistrict, interdistrict, and open enrollment public school choice programs to provide parents, particularly parents whose children attend low-performing public [...]
October 9, 2008 – 8:10 pm
IALA promotes educational choices and there would not be the compelling call for change in district schools if they engaged students more. Here are my comments about an amazing book by an extraordinary teacher in a most democratic program.
If Holden Caulfield Were In My Classroom: Inspiring Love, Creativity and Intelligence in Middle School Students by [...]