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"We don't want to have people say that these findings say these schools aren't doing RTI right; this turns out to be what RTI looks like when it plays out in daily life."

"Students are missing a lot of broader things that are going to make a difference in their ability to put it all together in functional reading."

students with "mild and relatively mild learning problems" are not representative anymore of the students targeted for Tier 2 interventions. "Over time, in many places what's happened is RTI has been deliberately used as a kind of general education substitution for special education. My strong sense is that over time, more and more kids with greater and greater severity of learning problems are being served in an RTI framework."

Now consider that, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, about half of all freshmen and sophomores are enrolled at the nation's 1,300 two-year colleges, and many of those students transfer to four-year institutions. For a large percentage of people who earn bachelor's degrees, then, the liberal-arts portion of their education was acquired at a two-year college. Next, factor in all of the community-college students who enter the work force after earning two-year degrees or certificates, and whose only exposure to the liberal arts occurred in whatever core courses their programs required. The conclusion becomes obvious: Two-year colleges are among the country's leading providers of liberal-arts education, although they seldom get credit for that role.

Employers rank communication and analytical skills among the most important attributes they seek in new hires, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Perhaps those of us who teach those very skills at community colleges should embrace the integral role we play in preparing the nation's workers rather than rejecting the idea of work-force development as somehow beneath us.

More important, this new perspective could have a positive effect on student success. If we come to see ourselves as preparing students not just for transfer but ultimately for the work force, students may be more likely to understand the relevance of the skills that we teach them and better able to use those skills for some purpose other than just getting a passing grade.

they were waiting for a time when the videotape material seemed less important and not likely to be on the test. Those students were using their metacognitive skills to decide when was a good time to be distracted and when it was important to focus

"focus" on classroom work for 15 minutes.

no need to be internally distracted since an opportunity to "check in" will be coming

Dr. Mason, who teaches economics at the University of North Florida, believes his students are just as intelligent as they’ve always been. But many of them don’t read their textbooks, or do much of anything else that their parents would have called studying. “We used to complain that K-12 schools didn’t hold students to high standards,” he says with a sigh. “And here we are doing the same thing ourselves.”

all evidence suggests that student disengagement is at its worst in Dr. Mason’s domain: undergraduate business education.

“Business education has come to be defined in the minds of students as a place for developing elite social networks and getting access to corporate recruiters,”

I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.

the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.

They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.

Today robotics and artificial intelligence call for another education revolution

working lives are so lengthy and so fast-changing that simply cramming more schooling in at the start is not enough. People must also be able to acquire new skills throughout their careers.

lifelong learning that exists today mainly benefits high achievers—and is therefore more likely to exacerbate inequality than diminish it.

Step 2: Teach students how to set goals and plan to meet them

Most schools will say that they want students to have an understanding of their world as a whole, but they seldom look at topics with an interdisciplinary focus. Why? It is easy to find reasons why this disjointed approach to learning happens: · Some argue that there is so much content and so many skills to be learned  in each discipline that they don’t have time to integrate subjects. · Others say that the each discipline has a body of knowledge and skills that  should stand on its own and not be muddied by the intrusion of other disciplines. · Secondary educators say that there is insufficient common planning time  to combine their efforts to teach an interdisciplinary course. · Still others say that the whole system is geared toward separate subjects  and to break out of this would require a monumental effort. · Others are guided by “the tests,” which are presented by separate disciplines.

The ultimate goal for the study of any subject is to develop a deeper understanding of its content and skills so that students can engage in higher-level thinking and higher- level application of its principles. When students dig deeper and understand content across several disciplines, they will be better equipped to engage in substantive discussion and application of the topic. They will also be better able to see relationships across disciplines.

Anything that can be learned falls broadly into two categories: things you need to understand intellectually, and skills you need to be able to perform. Most things you want to learn involve a mix of the two.

ee the distinction between skills and concepts, you can devise two separate learning strategies for each.

Rule #1: Practice for Skills, Connections for Concepts