Author: svb802

“School Districts Can’t Stand Still: 2 Strategies Can Help Them Survive and Thrive.” This is the title of an article Robin Lake, executive director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, and Travia Pillow, spokesperson for the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program at the Texas Comptroller’s Office, wrote last week for The 74. Here are…

Rob Sand is running for Iowa governor, after being the only Democrat holding statewide office since 2022. Sand currently holds the position of state auditor. I’ll probably vote for Mr. Sand, but his ideas on how to improve learning for the children of Iowa could benefit from some informed advice. This past Saturday, Sand addressed…

ABPTL has written about the “Mississippi Miracle” before. But now, Rachel Canter, director of education policy for the Reinventing America’s Schools project at the Progressive Policy Institute, offers insight as to why Mississippi is currently knocking it out of the park when it comes to elementary reading and math scores. Canter’s article appeared in a…

“A Little About A Lot” Trump Again Proposes Major Education Cuts in New Budget Proposal (EducationWeek) Back in 2014, when our non-profit decided to launch a brand new personalized learning lab school, we made the decision to continue assisting the traditional K-12 school system with leadership coaching, classroom assistance, and grant-making, even though we were…

I read an interesting story (“What Happened After a Teacher Ditched Screens, 4/6/26) this morning, a story originally published by The Atlantic earlier this week: “For more than a decade, Dylan Kane, a seventh-grade math teacher in Leadville, Colorado, leaned into technology as a way to improve his classes. Starting in 2014, he dragged Chromebook…

There is a fear spreading across America that artificial intelligence will cause extremely high levels of unemployment in the not too distant future. This fear is heightened when the focus turns to recent college graduates. But a recent article published by The Atlantic (Young People Are Falling Behind, but Not Because of AI, 4/2/26) refutes…

I’ve written about the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI) before. They are a well-intentioned group trying to improve Iowan lives. They earned recognition in the state back in the 1980’s when they partnered with Willie Nelson and others to protect Iowa family farmers from having their land repossessed by banks. Now they not…

It’s a rainy, cold day in Iowa…duck weather! Here’s “A Little About A Lot”: Many Parents Value Grades Over Test Scores, Missing Signals to Intervene (The 74, 3/30/26) By now, ABPTL readers should know how unreliable teachers’ grades are when it comes to assessing desired learning outcomes. For peat’s sake, we still have teachers rewarding…

What if work world and school world collided? Meaning kids could become better readers, writers, and problem-solvers while working at a job they love? There aren’t a lot of examples of learning spaces that combine work and school, but there are some – and they seem to be growing. Take for example the partnership between…

Outdoor learning has always been a “nice to do” in this country instead of a “have to do.” The opposite is true in the Scandinavian countries. Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark pride themselves for offering outdoor schools to children of all ages. Even when the temperature is well below freezing, Scandinavia’s young learners are taking…