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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)

"This is a new era where everyone needs to have a voice, and you want to leave a digital trail of yourself," says Ms. Siff.

After recruiters and job seekers find each other over Twitter, more traditional means of hiring usually take over: Candidates may tweet a link to a résumé or a more complete social-media profile, followed by phone or in-person interviews.

A tweet, she explains, "is the new elevator pitch."

This particular attendance award may have been especially flawed because rather than rewarding workers for exceptional performance, it rewarded them for fulfilling a basic job expectation.

hat awards are more effective when they recognize good behavior in the past, rather than behavior going forward

ou can't put a price on that. The recognition of hearing you did a good job and that others are hearing about it is worth more than money

What happens to the people who make their livings from teaching, when their jobs are replaced by online courses available for free? All we need is one superb remedial algebra course that can be effectively delivered online and, theoretically, the demand for a zillion remedial algebra courses taught at a zillion community colleges suddenly drops off a cliff. Ask the music business what happens when you can get good stuff for free instead of paying for crap. Daily newspaper journalists learned a similar lesson all too well over the past two decades. The Associated Press business model — licensing the same story to multiple outlets, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense once a single news outlet puts that AP story online for free.

My own daughter is a freshman at a U.C. campus, and has already experienced lectures attended by more than 500 students with sections led by teaching assistants who are utterly uninterested in doing their job. For dollar paid, the value received is questionable, and whenever that kind of situation exists, the status quo is ripe for disruption. (It’s also worth noting, perhaps, that over 60,000 students applied for spots in a freshman class that ended up enrolling only 4,500 applicants, a sign, I think, that the brick-and-mortar university is in no imminent danger of going the way of the dinosaur.)

Education, I’d argue, has always been the most likely sector of society to get transformed by the Internet, because the thing the Internet does better than anything else is distribute information.

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."

First, successful change leaders clearly articulate the need for change to a variety of audiences in ways that are intellectually coherent and emotionally compelling. The ability to do this requires that change leaders immerse themselves into radically different worlds

nderstand deeply is the world for which they are preparing their students

what skills, what habits of mind, and what dispositions

The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school

If  a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.

Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.

It is important to stop equating bilingualism with not knowing English and being un-American. Bilingualism means knowing and using at least two or more languages, one of which is English in the United States. Bilingualism allows you to communicate with different people and hence to discover different cultures, thereby giving you a different perspective on the world. It increases your job opportunities and it is an asset in trade and commerce. It also allows you to be an intermediary between people who do not share the same languages.

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.

“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.

"In the end, you can track this back to high school math. We're very good at the high end, but math is the place most students fail … that's the biggest challenge of them all. How do we get young people to learn math?"

The first world that change leaders must understand deeply is the world for which they are preparing their students.

They realize that the world no longer cares how much students know, but rather what they can do with what they know.

he second world effective change leaders understand is the world of students