This is the journal/report of a computer science teacher at a private school who redesigned his classes, moving away from a grades- and information-based model toward an adaptive learning, self-motivating, community-of-scholars, discovery approach. He designed it as an ongoing action-research project for his graduate degree. The narrative is easy to follow and good things happen.

I post this one as a counter to Mr Friedman, and as a guide toward where action research is needed: away from the built-in goals and failures of unchallenged schooling. It is a bit dated, but so is our approach. There's a chapter in one of his books entitled "Research by People" that I'll try to track down and see if it pertains.

No doubt helped by the federal dollars they seem to receive, here is a nice pamphlet from the Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory At Brown University. It explains their approach and model, and includes a couple of informative charts. It also describes two action research projects, one at an elementary school in Lowell and the other at a middle school in Providence.

More predictable easy pap from Tom Friedman, the NYTImes resident billionaire sage. He reports that we are falling fast and that we, in order to field a strong military and compete in global economics, need to make serious changes in the quality of our national teacher stock. He points to countries that require teachers to graduate in the top third of their college class and he advocates establishing a federal/national teacher's college, similar to a military academy, as a symbolic leader in the all out public relations battle needed to get people to take schooling seriously. He does closes by acknowledging that students and parents have to get on board, too.