Monthly Blog Archives: August 2012

This week's top education stories included some great pieces of writing that ask provocative questions, share personal stories, and discuss what's needed to provide children and families with high quality schools that offer instruction tailored to each student's needs.

Where does hope come from? That may sound like a naïve question, but given the state of dysfunction that’s prevalent throughout the South African education system, it’s one that those of us fighting for systemic improvements have to come back to again and again.

The week's education reform roundup includes calls for policy-makers to reexamine the role of standardized tests, questions about how we can help the most disadvantaged students, and a call from Joel Klein to let the private sector play a significant role in reforming public education, just as it's played a significant role in advancing other public sectors.

An important part of our role as a public health community is translation - making our data compelling, relevant and actionable to the people who will ultimately determine the success or failure of our efforts: parents, teachers, cafeteria managers, mayors, school district leaders, business owners, and others.

“We don’t need subsidies” is not what India’s Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) was expecting to hear at a recent Affordable Housing Workshop. But that’s exactly what housing developers catering to the needs of the urban poor had to say.

Highlights from the Charter School Growth Fund's Alex Hernandez, DC-based writer and education activist Sam Chaltain, KIPP New Orleans, and K-5 principal and Education Week blogger Peter DeWitt.

The conversation about the need for MFI boards to focus more heavily on governance of social objectives misses the real question: Whether the boards of MFIs are adequately fulfilling the role of company board, period.

Every week, we compile top stories from our Twitter feed. To stay abreast of the latest, follow us on Twitter.

Every week, we compile top stories from our Twitter feed and present them here in an attempt to bring attention to, stay informed on and continue the dialogue about the most important issues in our community. To stay abreast of the latest, follow us on Twitter.

This week, the foundation issued an open invitation for all education data experts and users to provide input into the next version of the Ed-Fi tools. We invite you to take a close look, see what these free tools have to offer and comment on how the tools should develop going forward.