David Coleman, lead author of the Common Core English standards, will lead the College Board beginning in October.  David told the Times, “The College Board is not just about measuring and testing, but designing high-quality curriculum.”  That’s something Coleman knows well.  Before launching Student Achievement Partners, Coleman developed Grow Network, a reporting system which interpreted results of state standardized tests for parents and teachers, which he sold to McGraw-Hill.  Coleman is a brilliant scholar, a passionate advocate, and an inspired choice for the important role. Gaston Caperton has led the College Board through steady growth for a decade. College Board is an unwieldy membership organization, but Gaston has encouraged the place to be more entrepreneurial while holding fast to it’s commitment to equity and access. Speaking of talented former West Virginia governors, Bob Wise and I spoke at a KnowledgeWorks Foundation dinner tonight in honor of retired president Chad Wick.  The dinner was held in the spectacular National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Funded 12 years ago by the sale of a student loan portfolio (like Lumina)... more

“We want to harness all the benefits of bricks to really propel student learning … but at the same time we find the lack of really good information about results and accountability really troubling,” said Dr. W.V. Lernen, a co-author of the report and the director of the Center for Study of The Apocryphal Cannon. About one third of all students in brick and mortar schools leave unprepared for college and work. Dr. Lernen finds that disturbing.  “It’s hard to imagine that sitting in brick classrooms for 180 days works well for students, but that appears to be the primary approach,” said Dr. Lernen. Enrollment in U.S. schools using bricks remains steady at more than 50 million students. However, the research on how successful those schools are is mixed, with the majority of research finding higher dropout rates and lower test scores for full-time students than their counterparts in schools where students spend at least a portion of the day online. The study also looked at the confusing way that brick schools are funded. “The... more

The prevailing problem with American high schools is boredom.  Actually, that’s just a symptom of alienation, irrelevance, and infantilization.  A disconnected string of classes—some too hard, some too easy—appears to most teens to have little to do with life.  And, they are right. But there is a solution, or at least some inspiration at “Maker Faire” running this weekend in San Mateo.  It’s a “festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement.” What if, instead of going to class, students planted a garden, started a business, conducted an experiment, produced a video, or wrote a book? “What about stuff they need to learn to produce high quality products?” you might ask?  That’s where playlists come in.   School of One introduced us to the idea of a customized playlist for every student.  Advances in predictive algorithms and adaptive curriculum (some cool adaptive math products were featured yesterday) makes it possible to imagine a learning day that is a mixture of playlists and production. That’s how blended learning should work—a combination of personal... more

At the Oklahoma Digital Learning Summit last week, an Oklahoma STEM specialist asked me what math products I liked and I mentioned the following: Elementary Math i-Ready.com from Curriculum Associates, is a great K-8 adaptive assessment with engaging content. Dreambox.com is a K-3 game-based adaptive math product. ST Math from MIND Research Institute is a visual game-based approach used with great results in over 1,200 schools; ST Math is now available on iPad. They are launching their Seattle Math Initiative this Wednesday. Middle Grade Math Mangahigh.com is a games-based online math resource that hosts some 70 million math questions answered per month.  Check out Tangled Web—a complementary angles game or watch a video. ReasoningMind.com, based on the Russian curriculum with a pretty good adaptive engine and a lot of support from the Hoglund Foundation. Open Secondary Math CK12.com, famous for dozens of free math and science textbooks, is now an OER object library.   FlexMath.org is becoming a very cool adaptive product—stay tuned for more. Hippocampus has solid high school math and science content.  NROCmath.org previews... more

Philip K. Howard is a lawyer, author and chair of Common Good. He is the author, most recently, of Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America. In a recent Atlantic piece, Howard pitched a five part bureaucracy busting platform: #1 No Child Left Behind should refocus on transparency of student achievement by uniform standards that require a common test across all states and evaluate the progress of individual students, not just schools. That’s the half of the idea behind Common Core standards.  The other half is real college/career ready standards. This data can inform educators, families, and the community, and provide the tools to track the development of each students.This data can inform both educators and the community. Punitive sanctions that drive educators to “teach to the test” have proved counterproductive and should be discarded. #2 There should be mutual disarmament of bureaucratic requirements by both school administrators and unions. Detailed rules should be replaced by general goals and principles. Disputes should be resolved informally by a school-based committee, not formal legal proceedings. #3 Accountability should... more

The Globe Gazette reported that Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is expected to sign a watered down ham-handed education bill “even though he and Department of Education Director Jason Glass agree it falls short of what they wanted.” The Iowa legislative session ended with watered down education reform bill passing.  The bill lacked most of the Gov’s requested reforms including a mandatory college entrance exam, expansion of charter schools, alternative certification, and a prohibition against using seniority in layoffs. Two virtual schools are allowed to open with significant restrictions including: 900 student statewide enrollment cap Additional cap not allowing more than 1% of a districts’ total enrollment to enroll in a virtual school. Sunsetting both virtual schools after three years. After three years, not allowing students to open enroll in virtual schools. A taskforce to study and make recommendations for state board rules. These provisions obviously have nothing to do with what’s good for students and everything to do with protecting school district budgets.  It’s embarrassing that Branstad would even consider signing a ridiculous set of... more

My grandmother consistently lived her beliefs, you could hear it and see it, under any circumstance, in any setting.  She was kind to everyone she met, never spoke a cross word, didn’t exceed the speed limit, and would not go in a door marked “Exit.”  She dressed up for and was as kind to her hairdresser as she would be on a visit to the Queen of England.  Unpretentious and humble, she put her faith into practice – consistently.  She had integrity. What would that kind of integrity look like on the job?  I think there are three components: honesty, delivery, and consistency. Honesty: introspective honesty with self, courageous honesty with others, intellectual honesty with the world. Integrity puts honesty into practice.  Honesty is talking about it; integrity is doing the right things, and doing them consistently. Delivery: delivering as promised and promising what you can deliver.  I have sweat shirt that author Jim Kouses gave me says DWYSYWD, which stands for “do what you say you will do.”  I could use one for every... more

“If we get this right, we’ll put our students on the path to a better future.”  Gene Wilhoit, CCSSO, was talking about implementing Common Core assessments during closing panel of the Technology Enhanced Assessment conference. But Gene said, “Let’s not be satisfied when we have these new assessments in place.” He said the PARCC and SBAC assessments will be a big step forward but may become the next anchor.  David Conley, EPIC, said there is a risk that these new tests “may become the crowing achievement of the 20th century“ rather than assessments appropriate for the second decade of the 21st century. I agree with Dave and Gene—the Common Core assessments are a good start.  We need to make sure they re as good as promised, but we need to start planning now for version 2.0 and 3.0. “The old saying was what gets measured gets valued,” Conley said, “but the new saying needs to be what gets valued gets measured.”   Conley suggested that the K-12 assessment crowd may be able draw important measurement insights... more

My kids make a lot more decisions per hour than my grandparents did.  David Conley, they guy that literally defined college and career ready, asked “What is the proper preparation for making more decisions? Conley, author of College Knowledge and College and Career Ready, runs Epic, the place that decides if your AP class is really an AP class.  On Wednesday he spoke at the Technology Enhanced Assessments conference hosted by the K12 Center at ETS and CCSSO. “Years of schooling is generally associated with non-cognitive success measures: persistence, effort, being on time, cooperation,” said Connelly, “But that’s a pretty low bar.” As the Hewlett Foundation deeper learning agenda suggests, learning to learn is big deal.  Conley said, “Master of strategic learning techniques is as important as prior content knowledge in the subject area.” New measures. Patrick Kyllonen from ETS presented a paper on non-cognitive  measures.  He summarized an employer survey that suggest the top five skill requests were oral communication, teamwork, professionalism, writing, and critical thinking.  Kyllonen said there is some evidence of better... more

The return on investment from American colleges is dropping—a combination of insane cost inflation and a crummy job market.   To be fair, many colleges are giving kids what they want—beautiful campuses, restaurants, and spas—and parents, lenders, and alumni keep shelling out the cash.  But disruptive alternatives—like free—will pop the bubble for third tier institutions.  Declining subsidies will convert your favorite state U into a selective private institution (e.g., University of Colorado is basically private). And your kid won’t get in because the U decided to boost enrollment of full-tuition international students. A group of about thirty higher education leaders, philanthropist, entrepreneurs, policy makers and advocates met in DC yesterday to discuss strategies for boosting college completion and ROI. They started with a provocative question: now that most of the world’s knowledge is available as free and open content, does college still matter?  There was general agreement that most employers still value a degree, so credits still matter—especially for low income and first generation students. Competency-based systems, like Western Governor’s University, obviously makes sense and despite... more