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the Obama administration's educational policy under the leadership of Arne Duncan lacks a democratic vision and sense of moral direction

Almost all of Duncan's polices are indebted to the codes of a market-driven business culture, legitimated through discourses of measurement, efficiency and utility. This is a discourse that values hedge fund managers over teachers, privatization over the public good, management over leadership and training over education. Duncan's fervent support of neoliberal values are well-known and are evident in his support for high-stakes testing, charter schools, school-business alliances, merit pay, linking teacher pay to higher test scores, offering students monetary rewards for higher grades, CEO-type management, abolishing tenure, defining the purpose of schooling as largely job training, the weakening of teacher unions and blaming teachers exclusively for the failure of public schooling.[4]

Duncan has expanded the reach of his educational reform policies and is now attempting to rewrite curricular mandates. Emphasizing the practical and experiential, he seeks to gut the critical nature of theory, pedagogy and knowledge taught in colleges of education. This is an important issue to more than just teachers who are denied a voice in curricular development; it also affects whole generations of youth. Such a bold initiative reveals in very clear terms the political project that drives his reforms and what he fears about both public schooling and the teachers who labor in classrooms every day.

Given this situation, it is clear that some of the following are needed to build a workplace that innovates—in other words—a learning organization:

Let's assume you have engaged students in worthwhile class work and it is time for them to involve themselves in an inquiry related to it and of interest to them. Forget about "research," forget about "the term paper,î abandon the often calcified list of "subjects." Here is a proposed series of steps and assignments for the process.

* "significant learningî ó that which raises questions and problems whose answers and solutions promote further curiosity and learning that have the potential to develop into a lifelong pursuit.

Assignment A: Ask students to prepare three carefully worded questions on a matter related to classwork whose answers they might like to pursue.

One of the best examples I have seen of the flex model was in Morgan Hill, California. This is a district south of San Jose where about a third of its students are Hispanic and I believe over a third of its students are on free-and-reduced price lunch. The school is called the Silicon Valley Flex Academy - Grades 6 through 12. As you walk into the school there are a couple of huge open spaces on either side where every student has his/her own office. In this space, each student has his/her own computer. The students are encouraged to decorate their own space with things they like (in the same way an adult might decorate an office at work). There are break out classrooms around the perimeter of the building. Here teachers are getting the data on how the kids are doing. Teachers can pull students into these break-out classrooms in very small groups. The teacher is then able to focus on a student's individual issues. The teacher's job is totally different in this arrangement. The fascinating thing was how much ownership the students have over their learning. They all knew exactly what was expected of them the entire year. They knew exactly how they were doing at any point. Their job was to learn the material. If they could get the work done during the school day there was no homework. So it was up to the individual students to make those decisions.

The teachers I spoke to explained that they had been trained to do lesson planning, lectures to large groups of students and classroom management -- none of which they were now doing. They explained that the adjustment was difficult. Training has not been built into the formal teacher training system for programs like this, and few are really thinking about it at the moment. Now, the teacher is still doing teaching or tutoring when pulling students out into small groups for project-based work, but instead of this being determined by a pacing guide, this is now being determined by where the students are in their learning. What was so interesting was that in this model, teachers were able to do the tutoring and value enrichment work that teachers really like to do but don't always get time to do in a classroom. One of the challenges the teachers mentioned was staying on top of scheduling. How do you keep track when you have students at different places in the curriculum? Those were tough decisions for teachers to make and they were, as you say, learning on the job.

When students own their learning, they feel responsible for it and motivated to do it. What they also appreciated was that the teacher was no longer there to "punish them" or "grade them down". Instead the teacher was there to help them reach their goal. This is much more of an environment built around success and motivation versus failure.

As a first time student enrolled in an online course, I am dismayed by the total lack of the instructor's input. She merely feeds us the publisher's materials, has a teaching assistant grade the homework and pulls her tests from the publisher's test bank. I could teach this course, easily, myself.

There is no "teaching" or explanation, just self study. Silly things are graded like participation in discussions, and homework is often graded despite the fact the solutions manuals are all available online for students. Many online courses are taught by for-profit schools whose key motivation is to never fail students and to keep their tuition dollars flowing in. Even traditional schools' online courses are silly. The teacher has no way to know who is taking the exams. Exams are open book. Let's all start calling it the sham that it really is.

I have to say, from my experience as a student in an Ivy League school on the ground I had experiences like that. You can't judge an entire way of teaching and learning from these experiences.I have been teaching graduate school online since 1999. I engage actively with learners one on one, in small groups and in the class. I use meeting technologies as well as the Blackboard discussion. Learners work independently or collaboratively, depending on the assignment. I review and make detailed comments on their writing in assignments that require them to reasearch and draw on multiple scholarly sources. There is typically not one textbook, so "publisher's materials" or "open book exams" are non-existent. Even discussion assignments are submitted in full APA style and require references to the assigned and other scholarly readings. Higher order critical and creative thinking, original analysis, are required.

I would love to have my students in China join in the discussion about Christopher Columbus.  They would like to share with your students the story of the great Chinese admiral, Zheng He (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He), and his exploration of the world 50 years before Columbus set sail. My students are studying US history this semester, and we are exploring the topic of the “Columbian exchange;” how the the early explorations brought plants, animals, and diseases around the world for the first time.

Although Christopher Columbus day as come and gone and the 5th graders unit on the historical figure has (officially) ended, we will continue to make connections to expand our horizons and learn from different perspectives.

As a class we analyzed the responses of the survey in the spreadsheet, although I received nightly updates via email from excited students as the numbers of participants climbed steadily.

I suggested that perhaps his daughter should not leave her full name when commenting on my blog, and that I would make this suggestion to all my students so as to protect those who wished to remain anonymous.

If, in your personal view, these ethics interfere with your own child’s learning, and reduce the likelihood that she will achieve future academic or professional successes, then I would encourage you to engage her in conversations about economics in your own preferred manner and direct her to online or print media that you think will better enhance her understanding of the subject yet still allow her to meet the requirements of my course without having to participate in the public discussions and debates occurring between students and teachers around the world on my blog.

At the beginning of the year, we talked about the privacy issues resulting from name-identified and web-searchable articles from ZIS students and class work on your website. By when do you think you will have past, present and future contributions annonymized?