Parents more focused on their children’s education can also make a huge difference in a student’s achievement.

There’s no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student’s achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers.

The theme here is fun math books. Thus, if a book says something like “this is a division sign,” you will not find the book on this list. These books get kids thinking about numbers and problem solving in neat ways without realizing that they are learning math.

Do we structure school in such a way that we truly promote and achieve that intricate balance between: 1) wanting to know and to understand and 2) keeping perspective that we have to be wrong quite a bit in order to gain deep knowledge and understanding?

What's this have to do with lectures and my students' complaints? Well, far too often, lectures and recitation sessions are just like the conversations Steve and I had with Paul. When somebody else is presenting a detailed explanation of how they solve some problem, it's very easy to nod along and say "Yes, yes, of course, that's the thing to do." You leave the room perfectly convinced that you've understood everything, but when you try to apply what you think you know by explaining it to someone else, you find that you didn't really understand a thing.

That's the problem with good explanations: they're incredibly seductive, convincing you that you understand things that you don't understand at all.

It’s part of a larger movement to rethink and re-imagine what a public library will look like and what functions it will serve. While many people do see libraries solely as book repositories, it’s clear that the library is much more than that.

there is a natural spread to knowledge and growth that is beyond the influence of a teacher or the fact that different combinations of teachers in the life of a student in a given year could have varying effects on achievement.

Estimates of value added are unstable across models, courses that teacher might teach, and years.

These 5th graders in a suburban elementary school in southeast Georgia have been engaged in a yearlong blogging project whose purpose was to create a space for the students to converse about what they were learning in class and beyond.

We chose to leave our blogs open, giving students a worldwide audience.

Because students' blogs were available for outsiders to view, we carefully reviewed guidelines for safe and responsible blogging

MEC asks science educators who teach grades 7-12 to develop inspiring ways to fit Mars science and exploration into their “every day” classroom lessons – such as biology, chemistry, physics, geology, etc.  MEC empowers teachers to create lessons that will enable educators to teach these topics in new and interesting ways by using Mars as an example.

When we ask students to memorize and replicate for tests, this is surely the message.  Even worse, we equate the work with learning, when they are plainly distinct.