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According to a New York Times analysis, New York City students have steadily improved their performance on statewide tests since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took control of the public schools seven years ago.

Critics say the results are proof only that it is possible to “teach to the test.” What do the results mean? Are tests a good way to prepare students for future success?

Tests covering what students were expected to learn (guided by an agreed-upon curriculum) serve a useful purpose — to provide evidence of student effort, of student learning, of what teachers taught, and of what teachers may have failed to teach.

Record numbers of young people are not in school, college or work in England, official figures show.

The ranks of 18-24-year-olds considered to be "Neets" - not in education, employment or training - has risen by more than 100,000 in the past year.

The statistics show that in total, 835,000 18 to 24-year-olds are now Neets, up from 730,000 for the same quarter last year.

On Demand Classes help you meet the needs of your students. You know the need for 21st Century Information Fluency Skills has never been higher You also know you’re understaffed and overbooked Start the new school year with a customized online training experience that will teach your students critical reading skills as they learn to search and evaluate Internet resources. Our multimedia enhanced, interactive course is suited for students from middle school through adult.

The paradoxical thing about information and searching is that the more of it there is, the less of it we will see. The results we retrieve will be a smaller and smaller sample of what's actually available. And I don't see how this trend can be reversed.

When I ask workshop participants if they've ever gone to the end of the list retrieved, I've never encountered anyone who has. Most searchers stop after the first page; the number who look at two pages is much smaller. For the 8 people in 100 who go beyond the third page, they have access to 0.1% of the information theoretically available. For the majority who never look beyond page one, that number falls to 0.025%.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is ranked #5 on the list of the most cited Black scholars in the humanities.

A multicultural education should be one that leaves you not only knowing and loving what is good in the traditions of your own sub-culture but also understanding and appreciating the traditions of others (and also critically rejecting the worst of all traditions). The principle of selection is clear: we should try to teach about those traditions that have been important to American history. This means that we begin with Native American and Protestant Dutch and English and African and Iberian cultures, adding voices to the story as they were added to the nation. – Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Beware of Race Pride,” The American Enterprise, September 1995.

Certainly there is the entertainment element to this service, however I also see a great deal of potential for educational value as well. The Common Craft Show has shown us that hand-drawn explanations – completely devoid of a single on-screen pixel – can be used to effectively explain social media concepts. I think GoAnimate could do much the same.

I’m hoping that there will be a way to download the cartoons you create, and/or upload them to your YouTube account – because I prefer to keep all my digital media stored more or less in the same place.

The education sector bias (and related legal prohibitions) against investment by private companies is remarkable in contrast to other public delivery systems.

We don't mind if textbook publishers update versions, but hackles go up when private operators propose school management. Most of this is just disguised job protection; the rest is historical bias.

Mosaica and NHA are offering a service that is clearly superior to near by public schools and doing it for less money. They usually have to provide their own facility with no public funding. Yet they are prohibited from holding charters directly in most states. They find or construct a non-profit corporation which seeks a charter and then contracts with them for school management services. They run the risk of being kicked out of a school that they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to open.

You can’t make any sweeping generalizations based on the results

older students tend to cheat less frequently than younger students

If you are interested in this topic, look for the interesting edited book called Student Plagiarism in an Online World: http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=7031&v=tableOfContentsI wrote a chapter called, "Expect Originality! Using Taxonomies to Structure Assignments that Support Original Work." In it I discuss the complexities of plagiarism in the context of a digital culture of sharing and suggest that it is rarely black and white. I propose a continuum with intentional academic dishonesty on one end and original work on the other, with gradations in between. Based on my own research and teaching experience, I believe the instructional design and style of teaching can either make it easy-- or very difficult-- to cheat.

Collective intelligence

The publication Educating the Net Generation: A Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy is now available to download. The Handbook is the main outcome of the Educating the Net Generation project. It provides a set of practice and policy guidelines developed from the project findings.

Student A knowingly goes to Students B’s and C’s site, examines the tag for stemcellresearch, finds some new resources, and tags them into Student A's account at del.icio.us. Is this appropriate or a violation of academic integrity

There will be a revolution when more and more students get their hands on some of these devices and start using them in the classroom.

We have to figure out a way to embrace and value informal learning, such as self-study.

Robert Scoble asserts that the change will come from the kids, not from top down.

As for the teaching of history, Ms. Ravitch argues, the sort of censorship being practiced today by textbook publishers can result in all manner of distortions and simplifications. For instance, to insist that depictions of women as nurses, elementary-school teachers, clerks, secretaries, tellers and librarians perpetuate demeaning stereotypes is to minimize ''the barriers that women faced,'' and to pretend ''that the gender equality of the late 20th and early 21st centuries was a customary condition in the past.''