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"Finland's plans to replace the teaching of classic school subjects such as history or English with broader, cross-cutting "topics" as part of a major education reform have been getting global attention, thanks to an article in The Independent, one of the UK's trusted newspapers. Stay calm: despite the reforms, Finnish schools will continue to teach mathematics, history, arts, music and other subjects in the future. But with the new basic school reform all children will also learn via periods looking at broader topics, such as the European Union, community and climate change, or 100 years of Finland's independence, which would bring in multi-disciplinary modules on languages, geography, sciences and economics. It is important to underline two fundamental peculiarities of the Finnish education system in order to see the real picture. First, education governance is highly decentralised, giving Finland's 320 municipalities significant amount of freedom to arrange schooling according to the local circumstances. Central government issues legislation, tops up local funding of schools, and provides a guiding framework for what schools should teach and how. Second, Finland's National Curriculum Framework is a loose common standard that steers curriculum planning at the level of the municipalities and their schools. It leaves educators freedom to find the best ways to offer good teaching and learning to all children. Therefore, practices vary from school to school and are often customised to local needs and situations."

"I recently had a pleasant back and forth with Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute on what ails the high school. He was reviewing the recent disconcerting NAEP results that once again show high school achievement is resistant to reform. On this he and I agree. But then he proposed some diagnoses, the latter of which I think is totally off base (an E D Hirsch diagnosis). I strongly agree with his conclusion: it's high time we better understood the problem of the high school. (Hard to believe that after 30 years of reform that started with me working with Ted Sizer in the Coalition of Essential Schools, we still lack clear answers.) After going back and forth collegially, we agreed to do some walk-throughs together next school year."

"I hate the phrase "student voice." I'll tell you why. People are starting to throw this phrase around a lot in discussions about education reform. "We need to give students a voice." "More student voice!" "A place for students at the education reform table!" But I think it's a mask. When people talk about giving students a voice, what they're really doing - whether they realize or not (and to their credit, I suspect they don't) -  is finding a band-aid solution to a big problem that really needs surgery. "Student voice" is cushy and comfortable because it doesn't actually require serious, deep-rooted change. We do need to give students something, but it's not a voice. I know, because I'm a student."

"Concern for 21st century learning has driven the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by more than 40 states. These new standards recognize that the premium in today's world is not merely on students' acquiring information, but on their being able to analyze, synthesize, and apply what they've learned to address new problems, design solutions, collaborate effectively, and communicate persuasively. Achieving these goals will require a transformation in teaching, learning, and assessment so that all students develop the deeper learning competencies that are necessary for post-secondary success."

"early seven years after first opening its doors, the Science Leadership Academy public magnet high school* in Philadelphia and its inquiry-based approach to learning have become a national model for the kinds of reforms educators strive towards. "

"Ohio educators are facing a barrage of new initiatives, such as the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System, Ohio's New Learning Standards and the next generation of assessments that require multiple changes in practice all at the same time. As educators begin wading into the waters, they increasingly are turning to social media for insight and support from their colleagues statewide. Even if you have little experience in social media, here are a few tools you can use that are quickly developing into invaluable education-reform communications tools."

"Bloom's Taxonomy can be a powerful tool to transform teaching and learning. By design, it focuses attention away from content and instruction, and instead emphasizes the "cognitive events" in the mind of a child. And this is no small change. For decades, education reform has been focused on curriculum, assessment, instruction, and more recently standards, and data, with these efforts only bleeding over into how students think briefly, and by chance. This means that the focus of finite teacher and school resources are not on promoting thinking and understanding, but rather what kinds of things students are going to be thinking about and how they'll prove they understand them. This stands in contrast to the characteristics of the early 21st century, which include persistent connectivity, dynamic media forms, information-rich (digital and non-digital) environments, and an emphasis on visibility for pretty much everything. What does this mean for how you use Bloom's Taxonomy in your classroom? What kinds of adjustments should you make-if any-in light of these shifts in the 21st century?"

"Financial literacy used to be a class in many schools-well, until that whole standards-based reform and "accountability" movement started turning the screws on schools. And like that, it was gone. It only takes one look at our nation's financial crisis, heaps of student loan trouble, and general credit malaise to wonder if financial literacy shouldn't be a bit higher on our priority list. An easy retort is to wonder who has the time-and where are the standards, where is the research, and who's going to see the data? But what if, rather than teaching a pure financial literacy lesson or unit, you tied it to your content area? What if it was embedded into a project-based learning unit about design or social media or the causes and effects of World War II?"

"Education-bashing has become something of a national sport in the United States. From hurling criticism about slipping test scores, socio-economic disparity, dropout rates, to raising concerns about poor teaching standards and school resources, the popular narrative is that U.S. schools are failing children. There's good reason for the pile-on: in many cases, the problems are real. While most of the conversation around education reform centers on how to address these existing issues, another point of view has been gaining momentum over the last several years. It's a point of view that is less focused on fine-tuning the current system for high performance-since the system was built in 1893 with the goal of churning out "good workers"-and more about rethinking education entirely and how it meets the world's rapidly changing economy in the information age. This topic is explored in depth in the feature-length documentary, Most Likely to Succeed, which premiered at Sundance and will appear at the Tribeca Film Festival April 24. In the film, director, writer and producer Greg Whiteley casts a light on the shortcomings of established education methods by focusing on one school that's defying convention, San Diego's High Tech High. While following two ninth-grade classes for a year, with classroom instruction unlike anything you've ever seen, the doc offers some inspirational ideas for how to help students rise to the occasion of an innovation economy that requires critical thinking."