Category: Learnings

When I worked in public education, I witnessed a lot of stress between young learners, basically because all those kids had to report to one place – a place called school. You had football jocks, science nerds, gay and straight kids, and a host of different racial and ethnic groups, all under one roof. We…

I’m back from our Minnesota lake house. Here’s hoping everyone had a restful holiday weekend. While on vacation, I ran across an article The 74 published online titled “Tiny Indiana District With Online School Worth Millions Ordered To Close.” Here are excerpts from piece: “The Union School Corporation in the tiny town of Modoc –…

It’s Thursday and it’s Juneteenth. I’m a big country and western fan, and Vern Gosdin is one of my favorites. Gosdin recorded a song titled “Right in the Wrong Direction” back in 1990. It’s a song about a common country and western theme – cheating. But it could also be the title of Donald Trump’s…

It’s Wednesday, June 18th – I’m back from a short absence. Members of the Democratic Party have started to question whether the way our traditional K-12 system currently runs is the best way to get all kids smarter and stronger when it comes to reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development skills. Instead, the Democrats have…

I use a lot of EducationWeek material in my postings. The information they provide and the reporting they offer is excellent – usually. But this week they shared information for district leaders titled “The District Leaders’ Guide to Shoring Up Teacher Morale.” I’ve been part of and around the K-12 educational world since 1984, and…

Time. It’s one of the most difficult challenges for our K-12 system to master. Ask them about anytime, anywhere learning and they give you a serious “deer in the headlight” stare. The traditional system is much more comfortable with the time allotted for learning they’ve been using for, well, at least 180 years now. Around…

I wonder who decided the cuts made at the U.S. Department of Education and exactly how those decisions were made. Did the decisionmakers have any educational experience? Were decisions to keep a program or shuck it based on data? The whole process was just so, well – vague. But that’s kind of how our current…

If there’s one thing our traditional K-12 system could do to immediately improve their status as a place where kids will become smarter and stronger, it’s this: Figure out a way to give all kids credit for learning completed outside of the normal school day and school year. Researchers tell us that today’s youth are…

Microschools are growing in number and now enroll nearly as many young learners as the New York City Department of Education. Last month, Deborah A. Gist (Transcend), Tom Vander Ark (Getting Smart), and Devin Vodicka (Learner-Centered Collaborative), all former superintendents within our K-12 traditional system, now all learning reformers interested in innovative ways to make…