Writing for Education Week, Catherine Gewertz reports on one of the nation’s biggest school-redesign competitions, through which 10 teams won a collective $100 million to create new high schools or transform existing ones across the country: Each of the winners of XQ: The Super School Project will have $10 million Read more
In a recent Getting Smart article, Bonnie Lathram and Tyler Nakatsu explore how educators can get started with Deeper Learning. They suggest six entry points: Be a maker As an educator, what artifacts are there that can showcase the “makers” that you and your students are? Bring your own talents Read more
Dozens of schools around the U.S. are opting to ditch the traditional school structure altogether to motivate teens in new ways–and it seems to be working. They are using the Big Picture Learning model. Big Picture’s model is now used in more than 60 schools across the U.S. In Vermont, it’s Read more
Policy implementation is perhaps the most difficult element of education reform. But what if policy development and implementation were flipped? What if policy design began with an implementation perspective? In a blog post in Education Week, Jal Mehta explores this concept: The idea of Human-Centered Systems Design is that if Read more
Most high school students are accustomed to learning in two ways: by listening to the teacher and by reading books and other texts. These familiar ways of learning work for them so long as their teachers demand only that they grasp and remember the given content. However, if the goal Read more
Getting Smart is a website devoted to improving education in today’s rapidly changing and globally connected world. One recent initiative of Getting Smart is “Smart Cities that Work for Everyone.” This initiative offers recommendations for how leaders in cities, but also applicable in states overall, can help educate and prepare Read more
CRPE, based out of the University of Washington, is focused on the complex systemic challenges affecting public education. The organization develops, tests, and supports evidence-based solutions to create new possibilities for the parents, educators, and public officials who strive to improve America’s schools. One of their regular publications, The Lens, Read more
The U.S. Department of Education recently announced the start of the 2014 grant competition for the Investing in Innovation (i3) program’s Scale-up and Validation categories. This competition will continue the Department’s investments in promising strategies that can help close achievement gaps and improve educational outcomes for our neediest students. The Read more
The U.S. Department of Education announced the start of the $134 million 2014 Investing in Innovation (i3) grant competition with the release of the program’s invitation for pre-applications for the i3 “Development” grants (up to $3,000,000 each). In its fifth round of competition, the i3 program continues to develop and Read more
Teach For America (TFA) announced the winners of its annual Social Innovation Award, including education advocate-turned-filmmaker Kelly Amis, who was one of the first 500 college graduates to be accepted into this national teacher recruitment program. Amis will receive a $50,000 grant from TFA’s Social Entrepreneurship Initiative to support TEACHED, Read more
The Education Division of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) announces winners and finalists in its Innovation Incubator Program. The program was held during the annual flagship Ed Tech Industry Summit, May 5-7, at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Ten products and services were featured during the event, Read more
The U.S. Department of Education announced the start of the $150 million 2013 Investing in Innovation (i3) grant competition with the release of the program’s invitation for pre-applications for the i3 “Development” grant category and the notice of final priorities for the i3 program overall. The announcement incorporates several improvements Read more
Across the country, state education agencies have begun to institute new offices to specialize in innovation—searching for new ideas and helping them to make it into education policy. The “new ideas” cover a variety of areas, from teacher quality to online learning, which means they “transcend the assigned duties of Read more
In a recent opinion piece for Education Week, Arthur Wise of the Center for Teaching Quality writes that current mainstream ideas on how to improve American public schools will result in “at best, a marginal improvement for small numbers of students.” Teacher effectiveness is worthy of increased research, but the Read more
In a recent article for The Atlantic, Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, reflects on wages and education. Using examples like Japan, Finland, Hong Kong and Shanghai, Tucker claims that until the U.S. finds a way “to educate our future work force to the Read more
The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) has taken action to “help restore the professional autonomy of teachers,” in exchange for agreeing to accountability measures. Earlier this month, MFT became the first teachers union in the country to open a charter school authorizer. “Conventional wisdom suggests that the interests of teachers Read more