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conclude that most school leaders can’t identify or explain what constitutes good teaching, much less come up with helpful suggestions for improvement

If we’re going to improve the quality of learning for all kids, we have to develop the expertise of those teachers we have in our ranks.”

hen they must guide, support and nurture teacher learning just like we expect teachers to do for students.”

At the core, it’s about caring for kids, doing what’s right by them not what’s easy for us. That’s the piece we seem to be missing, and that’s the piece that should be motivating all of us start screaming about a meaningful overhaul of the system

High-school textbooks are devices that regurgitate the universally accepted and least debated ideas from the field of science and technology, almost placing us in an isolated prism where we learn to accept knowledge.

our second biggest obstacle lies in the method of evaluation we have accepted to assess all students. I feel that much of our attention is channelized towards evaluating the amount of knowledge a student possesses. This focus would be better shifted if we start to question what the individual is able to do with their knowledge and to what extent they can they apply their learning toward writing textbooks of their own.

ack on the assembly line, our society didnʼt need innovators and thinkers shaping a shared vision for the field of their expertise. Now that weʼre getting trained for jobs which potentially donʼt exist today, itʼs crucial for educators to turn their attention to building the right aptitude just as much as they focus on instilling the informational aspects.

agreed with him, and emphasized that my condemnation was not of cheating as an isolated problem, but rather as one of many symptoms of a system that throws learning under the bus and turns testing into a kind of religion. Instead of proving academic worth, grades too often just tell us who’s willing to hustle, who’s willing to cheat, who’s willing to pull an all-nighter in order to memorize atomized facts that are quickly forgotten. And what does this do for our moral education, our character?

ndeed, it’s essentially common knowledge that school isn’t fun. So why do we make kids attend? If it’s for the sake of learning, then the school mandate isn’t working. Learning is an organic, thought-provoking, individual and collaborative process that requires more than copying off of a classmate during a fill-in-the-blank assessment.

“If you can make a lot of money, do whatever you can to get it” and “It’s okay to cheat on your tax forms or induce a subprime mortgage meltdown if you can get rich and get away with it.” Look how much cheating has brought our economy to near ruin. To bring about a real change in the way we approach work and economic life, the nature of schooling must be drastically altered so as to make true learning the number one priority.

d rather have school start late on professional development days, rather than ending early. “In another words, let kids have some sleep, sleep in a couple of times a month or whatever instead of getting home early, which doesn’t do them any good. I’ve heard a lot of that from parents,” Duncan said. Cindi McDonald, Waukee’s associate superintendent, said mornings are the prime learning time for students. Tags: calendar, Cindi McDonald, Dave Duncan, Duane Magee, Lance Mouw, school calendar, Waukee, Waukee Community School District, Waukee School Board, Waukee School District, West Des Moines .AR_1 .ob_what{text-align:right;clear:both;} .AR_1 .ob_clear{clear:both;} .AR_1 .ob_dual_container{ clear:both; } .AR_1 .ob_dual_left,.AR_1 .ob_dual_right { float:left; width:46%; padding:0 2%; } .AR_1 .ob_empty{ display:none; } YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN Firm apologizes for ethanol gas mistake in Iowa (DesMoinesRegister.com) Driver of Firebird in Greene County triple fatality was not licensed to drive (Des Moines Register) Parents of Waukee middle-schoolers can attend ‘Assessment for Learning’ class (Des Moines Register) Parents can learn about assessments (DesMoinesRegister.com) Boys' basketball: Friday night's statewide scoreboard, area highlights | Altoona Herald | desmoinesregister.com (altoonaherald.com) SPONSORED LINKS Romney’s ‘Charlie Crist’ Problem Could Hurt with GOP (Newsmax.com) FBI warns of new banking scam (Bankrate.com) NFL: The Most Classless Player on Every Team (BleacherReport)

The Work Ethic

these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia

the great divergence

I'd be very concerned if we try to nationalize or standardize expectations of what counts as competency," she said. "The credit hour is a fundamental academic decision. Faculty should decide what's attached to coursework."

Many colleges embrace Advanced Placement examinations as universal markers of quality, she said. Lawyers and doctors also have rigorous qualifying exams that are essentially competency-based assessments.

This is not the right time to jump off the old credit-hour boat and assume that new competency-based assessments are primed and ready to sail," she said. "And we should definitely not kid ourselves that there are strong standardized tests already available that can do the job for us."

At the same time, we need to have the confidence to make decisions on the spot, even in the absence of compelling, complete data.  The qualities needed at the top—openness, authentic listening, adaptability—also indicate that leaders need to be comfortable with and able to embrace the “grayness” that comes from other people’s ideas or situations that arise.

Learning Agility is a reliable indicator of leadership potential because learning agile people “excel at absorbing information from their experience and then extrapolating from those to navigate unfamiliar situations.

In short, Learning Agility is the ability to learn, adapt, and apply ourselves in constantly morphing conditions.

“I work almost full time while getting my master’s degree,” he said. “As an undergraduate, it allowed me a better balance between school, my work and my social life.”

online courses are a cost-effective way for universities to meet increased demand while coping with steep reductions in state funding in recent years, administrators say.

The number of online courses offered at Iowa’s three public universities has grown by nearly 25 percent from 2005-06 to 2010-11, data from the Iowa state Board of Regents show.

As we get ready for the 93rd year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers?