Classroom of the Future

Assessment and comparison of teachers’ ability to educate, based on student test scores, is manifestly unjust, given that school settings differ so widely. Good teachers are of course essential in education, but cannot be expected to raise the performance level of students in inner-city schools to that of students from wealthier, more resource-rich communities. 

There is no question that America’s education system is in mortal danger. Senator Hancock believes that the essential responsibility for failing schools lies not with teachers but can be traced back to the lawmakers who slash school funding. To be blunt, money, or the lack thereof, is the underlying factor that causes classrooms to overflow and deprives students and teachers of textbooks, facilities, counseling, and other forms of support. 

Improving education in America is not going to be easy. Reforms are needed that will take all the factors of education into consideration, granting teachers the respect they deserve while recognizing students’ birthright to a public education and providing them with adequate educational resources and community support.

I have been an adjunct online instructor with the North Carolina Virtual Public Schools since 2008 and have developed and taught an online course through my school, Forsyth Country Day School in Lewsville, NC.  This year, for the first time, I used the online platform to teach through “blended learning.”  Students had the virtual, online course throughout at their fingertips, while also being taught face-to-face each day

Students had the virtual, online course throughout at their fingertips, while also being taught face-to-face each day.  I found that the online platform was great for allowing students to get caught up if they fell behind and also allowed students to work ahead if they knew they would be traveling or would miss school because of an athletic event, etc. 

Such schools combine “face-to-face” education in a specific place (what used to be called “school”) with online instruction.

Rocketship is building a model in which kids learn much of their basic skills via adaptive technology like the DreamBox software, leaving classroom teachers free to focus on critical-thinking instruction and extra help where kids are struggling. Likewise, teachers will be able to “prescribe” online attention to specific skills.

Rocketship and the other school models we describe here offer a vision for what deeply integrated technology can mean for children’s education, for the way schools are structured, and for the promise of greater efficiency amid a lengthy economic downturn

have. We started out by brainstorming our ideas for what would be essential in this “standardized

would be essential in this “standardized classroom” and came up with the following list:

   One argument in this literature is that the "year-round" calendar reduces summer learning loss. Consider the assumptions behind the contention that reducing summer from 12 weeks to 6 weeks is going to have much of an impact. It assumes that relatively little forgetting occurs between September and June but a huge amount of forgetting takes place between July and September. This seems implausible on the face of it. Moreover, the  difficulties of measuring such loss are often dismissed but they are large.

This report reviews the debate on and the policies concerning learning time in America's public schools