Tag: teachers

It’s Friday. Here’s your News Roundup. After School Voucher Bill Falls Apart, Supporters and Opponents Get Ready for Future Fights (The Texas Tribune) According to The Texas Tribune online this week, “Many public educators and advocates saw the Texas House’s vote blocking school vouchers last month as a forceful rebuke that should signal there’s no…

Getting Smart, an education think tank led by Tom Vander Ark, recently released their first cohort of grantees from their Learning Innovation Fund. Not only are parents limited in their choices about where they send their children to learn, without the benefit of education savings accounts, new organizations committed to personalized learning, are also limited…

Confusion and struggle are good things when it comes to learning. Failure is not. This week, the Big Question Institute wrote this about confusion: “It’s crazy to think that we’re almost four years on from the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus.” “Do you remember the disruption of that moment? The chaos? The deep uncertainty and…

Imagine a learning world where one or two learning coaches work with a group of 40-50 young learners, building learning plans that are personalized and customized for each individual learner. You might think we are lightyears away from this type of adult learning leader/young learner relationship, but maybe not. EducationWeek online published an article last…

Schools like to whine about not having enough money. They are convinced that more money will solve all their problems. But here’s the deal. As long as schools don’t know how the money they are given impacts young learners, why should they receive more of it? Earlier this year, USA Today online published an article…

It’s Friday. Time for the Roundup. Do Cell Phone Bans Work? Educators Share Their Experiences (EducationWeek) No, they don’t. According to EducationWeek online this week, “At least 88 percent of teens own a personal smartphone, according to Common Sense Media, and 43 percent of 8- to 12-year-olds have smartphones.” “About 1 in 10 teachers, principals,…

I was set to write about how schools spend billions of dollars on training, but they don’t have a clue if that training works. But that article will have to wait until another day. I serve on a few non-profit boards now that I’m retired. This morning I had a check-in with the leader of…

High schools are in trouble. Filled with hormonal youth, trying to do everything for everyone, debating between college readiness and workforce preparation, our American high schools are struggling – many failing – in front of our eyes. When I was a high school principal in Texas, the mantra of the day was “college readiness for…

Tutoring seems to be the strategy we’ve chosen in our schools to combat learning loss caused by the COVID pandemic. But it seems America can’t do what we know to do – again. In other words, if we don’t start following best practices, tutoring will become another failed learning strategy and our kids will remain…