Tag: teachers

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…

Microschools are slowly gaining market share across the K-12 landscape. Last month, The 74 reported that, “In 2021, Tiffany Blassingame, who comes from a family of educators, opened her own school in a building attached to a Baptist church in downtown Decatur, Georgia. She teaches 18 K-5 students who come from across Atlanta for a…

For too many kids inside our traditional K-12 system, we’ve never been able to connect them with what was once considered the best way to learn – the apprenticeship. For thousands of years this was the way young people learned almost everything, including how to read, write, and solve problems. The apprentice and their mentor…

Until we decide to create a new system of learning for our kids, one act that would help clear the K-12 landscape of under-enrolled, and usually under-performing, campuses is the practice of school closure. But, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, Americans aren’t disciplined when it comes to closing schools that probably…

Instead of grades, we should use rubrics and narratives to provide feedback to our young learners. Recently, EducationWeek provided suggestions for adult learning leaders if they are interested in changing how they provide feedback to their young learners: “When designed effectively, grading rubrics can clarify expectations, minimize subjectivity, and standardize grading criteria across multiple teachers,…