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Background/Context: Recent trends suggest that middle-class parents may be a growing constituency in urban public schools and districts. Within the burgeoning literature on the middle class in urban public schools, most scholars have focused on parents' goals and orientations and/or the consequences of parental involvement in classroom and school settings. This article broadens the literature's scope through a focus on middle- and upper-middle-class parents' "out-of-school," neighborhood-based engagement. Examining the place-based organizing of a middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhood parents' group, this article highlights the significant influence that parents' work outside classrooms and PTA meetings can have on a local school.

A science teacher moves into a flipped classroom model... and right past it onto even better things.

Succinct summary explaining the flipped classroom, advantages, challenges and implications for the future.

"We are moving away from the model in which learning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that, for better and worse, have served as the main gateways to education and social mobility. Replacing that model is a new system in which learning is best conceived of as a flow, where learning resources are not scarce but widely available, opportunities for learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dip into and out of continuous learning flows." Hat tip to Jason Finley:  ttps://groups.diigo.com/group/vermont-education/content/user/jdfinley 

Monument Mountain school Independent Project alternative to classrooms, student directed learning

The Long Beach, Calif., school district has adopted a training system in which classroom teachers work collaboratively to improve teaching and learning, a shift from outsourcing professional development. 

Why school buildings must change

The blog of "Shelley Wright, who beautifully blogged her journey from stand-and-deliver teaching at the front of the classroom to an inquiry-based, technology-rich approach that found her learning along with her students," according to Will Richardson.

This analysis responds to a generation of criticism leveled at 1:1 laptop computer initiatives. The article presents a review of the key themes of that criticism and offers suggestions for reframing the conversation about 1:1 computing among advocates and critics. Efforts at changing, innovating, and reforming education provide the context for reframing the conversation. Within that context, we raise questions about what classrooms and schools need to look and be like in order to realize the advantages of 1:1 computing. In doing so, we present a theoretical vision for self-organizing schools in which laptop computers or other such devices are essential tools.