With this nation's renewed interest in children and education in the 1990s, there have been significant signs of recent growth in the media literacy movement emerging in the United States. In the State of North Carolina, for example, media literacy is included in both the Communication Skills (English) curriculum and in the Information Skills curriculum. In many communities, educators have begun the process of thinking seriously about expanding the concept of literacy to include media. While there was only one teacher-training program in media literacy in 1993, in 1994 there were 12 different programs held across the United States. However, in most communities, media literacy exists due to the energy and initiative of a single teacher, not because of a coordinated, community-wide programmatic plan of implementation. At present, only one such plan is now underway, in the community of Billerica, Massachusetts, which is developing a comprehensive media literacy program that reaches all students across the curriculum in grades K - 12.
Enid Baines on 30 Sep 12out that K-12 education accounts for 0.2 percent of the research and development expenditures in the U.S., a fraction of what is spent in the pharmaceutical industry, which is also highly regulated. A low-cost, rigorous, and rapid way to conduct randomized trials in schools would help education innovate at a rate similar to that of the general technology industry, where products are put in front of users early and often and companies are in a constant state of change, the paper argues. Though that's what could make the public nature of the results a hard selling point to entrepreneurs.
