Tag: students

  • The State of the American High School

    Earlier this month, Tom Vander Ark, Chief Executive Officer at Getting Smart, posted an article titled “The State of the American High School in 2024.” Vander Ark writes, “Over the past 120 days we’ve conducted tours of over 50 high schools in more than 1,000 classrooms across various cities including Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Northern…

  • Learning Coaches and Beavers

    The last topic I thought I would write about for A Better Path to Learning was beavers. That’s right, the cute little animal with buck teeth. But as I read a recent article about our furry friend, and the impact it’s making within the city of London, England, I started to think about a connection…

  • Friday News Roundup

    It’s Friday. Here is your News Update. Retention Is the Missing Ingredient in Special Education Staffing (EducationWeek) Lack of staffing continues to plague America’s traditional K-12 system, especially when it comes to serving special populations. EducationWeek online reported recently that, “Special education staffing strategies often focus on recruiting and training new teachers in the specialty,…

  • More on Microschools

    My friend Nate McClennan, Vice President of Strategy & Innovation at Getting Smart, along with his associate Jordan Luster, published an article earlier this month titled “Small Schools, Big Umbrella: Expanding, Defining and Scaling the Microschool System.” McClennan and Luster write, “Microschools, while not a new concept, are currently garnering increasing attention as an educational…

  • Learning Plans and the Art of Negotiation

    There’s too much time spent discussing the teacher autonomy issue, and not enough time focusing on the importance of student voice moving forward. A recent issue of ASCD’s Educational Leadership focused entirely on the importance of teacher autonomy and why there wasn’t more of it in our K-12 system. Two articles caught my attention. The…

  • Separating to Learn What?

    I don’t spend enough time trying to understand the conservative’s viewpoint these days. Like a lot of liberal-leaning folks, I tend to tune out the right, especially since most of their thinking seems to be skewed by Donald Trump. But I did read with interest an article appearing in The Atlantic  recently. Mike Hixenbaugh, a…

  • 70 Years After Brown

    Friday will be the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. But as The 74 online reported last week, our public schools are more segregated today than 30 years ago. Why is…

  • How Strangers Work As a Team

    One of the exceptional moments I saw at our personalized learning lab school years ago was when a group of learners became a team of learners. When that happened, individual learning stopped for the most part and collective learning began. It’s one of the reasons I believe 90% of the young learners gained 4 ½…

  • Building Stronger Schools: Excuse Me While I Yawn

    Here’s an excerpt from the latest “we can change schools for the better” pitch. It’s written by Dr. Tyler Thigpen, Academic Director of the Leading School Transformation program at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and head of The Forest School: An Acton Academy and Institute for Self Directed Learning. Thigpen writes, ……

  • Friday News Roundup

    Teacher Prep Programs See “Encouraging” Growth, New Federal Data Reveal (The 74) It seems like enrollment in teacher education programs is on the rise. The 74 online reported that, “…new federal data has given researchers some cause for optimism, suggesting efforts to make teaching more financially viable with strategies such as paying student teachers have…