Featured Articles

Learning

What are Teachers Responsible For?

Where does the current emphasis on accountability come from? I think it comes from a desperate need for equity and justice – from the awareness that has been raised by the national high-stakes testing of students that there is a very real and tragic difference in the outcomes of poor students versus those that are m...

21 days ago by Marie Bjerede

Learning

Education Standardization: Essential or Harmful?

In my previous post, I described how much of the standardization that exists in our current system of schooling is harmful to students and should be eliminated, but made the argument that not all standardization is harmful - that, in fact, in some cases it is essential to enable innovation and transformation.

25 days ago by Marie Bjerede

Learning

To Innovate in Education, First Standardize

Standardization harms students. The much-maligned industrial model of education truly is flawed in countless ways that flow from the assumption that children are like interchangeable parts on an assembly line.

26 days ago by Marie Bjerede

Learning

The Infrastructure of Personalized Learning

In my previous posts I’ve written about my wishes for a personalized learning environment for my children, how such an environment is not yet available, and how we as a family have begun to use a wide variety of resources to essentially prototype such an environment. I use the metaphor of a “platform” – seeing...

2 months ago by Marie Bjerede

Learning

The Learning Resources That Liberated a Family

In my previous post, I wrote about the school experience I wish for my own children. Today I am going to write about how as a family we have taken advantage of local and distant learning resources that allow us to treat education as a set of “platform services” that we can use to create a customized learning exper...

2 months ago by Marie Bjerede

advocacy partner

Curriculum Associates

Curriculum Associates, LLC, designs research-based print and online instructional materials, screening and assessment tools, and data management resources. We believe that every student deserves the chance to succeed and with our i-Ready™, Ready®, and BRIGANCE® programs, we strive to make this a reality with tools ...

Leadership

Prototyping Education as a Platform

I wish school were different for my children. As a mom living in a school district with excellent schools, high test scores and property values, research-based practices, and warm, thoughtful educators who care about my kids you would think I would be satisfied. But like generations of parents before me, I want more f...

3 months ago by Marie Bjerede

Learning

Part 2: Independent Learners Require First Independent Teaching

Yesterday I tackled the debate of student performance as a measure of teacher effectiveness. Here’s why performance-based pay for teachers as an approach to teacher effectiveness runs counter to every meaningful definition of personalized education.

5 months ago by Marie Bjerede