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It’s not just about the kids watching the same lecture the night before. For us, the big piece is having teachers use data to make instructional decisions about their students,

Students worked through those initial units quickly, but she could see when they hit their “pain points”—sometimes on material covered several grades earlier. The Los Altos Pilot Administrators, teachers, and students in Los Altos School District share their experiences with Khan Academy. Source: The Khan Academy Administrators Teachers Students “In order for me to get that kind of understanding of a student, I would have had to sit down one-on-one and work through problems and see a pattern, which I’m happy to do, but it takes a lot of time,” Ms. Caldwell said. “This confirmed my suspicions and allowed me to remediate much more quickly.”

“I was able to identify those learning gaps in real time, whether it was from 3rd or 4th or 5th grade, and I was able to remediate and saw those learning gaps begin to disappear

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.

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.

Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher.

There's no word for accountability in Finnish,"

"Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

The Work Ethic

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

the great divergence

There used to be a huge focus on teaching, and now we’re focused on learning,” he said. “Now it’s a simple statement but has huge implications for the classroom.”

The top three reasons for advocating the traditional letter grade among parents were: “like the old way,” “afraid kids won’t be prepared” and “can’t compare students.”

91 percent said they agree or strongly agree with the phrase “overall I have an understanding of where I am in my learning and the areas that I need to continue to learn.”

Great coaches ask young athletes to go to "great heights" to challenge themselves. They take care to prepare the athlete for each stage of development, but they cannot eradicate risk because it's inseparable from growth. They can, however, intervene to ensure that the risk isn't so great that it outweighs the reward of accomplishment

The best coaches encourage young people to work hard, keep going when it would be easier to stop, risk making potentially painful errors, try again when they stumble, and learn to love the sport. Not a bad analogy for a dynamic classroom.

passionate about their sport and understand it deeply

he schools were joyous places.  This, he said, seemed to be the foundation for everything else he observed

ecause the lessons were beautifully crafted, clearly designed to be as engaging as possible. 

were lined with other teachers who were collaborating in the design of these lessons.

“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.

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)

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.