Tag: US Ed

When Alliance College-Ready Public Schools launched Blended Learning for Alliance School Transformation (BLAST), we were confident that the integration of technology into our curriculum would help us individualize instruction for all students. What we didn’t fully appreciate was the impact on teachers.

If we’re serious about education reform, we must do more than focus on either/or prescriptions for reform (charter vs. district, traditional vs. blended, innovation-focus vs. accountability-fouces, etc.), and focus on equipping real world teachers with the supports and tools they need to do their best work with every child every day.

Blended learning has driven substantial academic gains for Arthur Ashe Charter School's SPED students and others. Effective change management made it possible.

The 2011-2012 school year was a transformative one for Summit Public Schools. What started out as a blended learning math pilot in our two San Jose schools has fundamentally reshaped the model of our next generation schools, the first two of which will open in the fall of 2013.

Before KIPP Empower Academy even opened, even opened, we projected a $200,000 shortfall in expected revenue in year one. Even more problematic, our planned class size was no longer possible.

As a former teacher, I was inspired from the moment I understood blended learning’s potential benefit: Executed well, it could effectively support teachers in individualizing instruction for all students. And so I have watched over the last few years, as blended learning has generated a undeniable excitement among players in the K-12 space.

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.

There are a lot of reasons we need to get over our kneejerk reactions to the pairing of the words "education" and "data." But none is more compelling than the limitations they place on teachers and students.

Lack of standardization in education data and technology is the main factor keeping the ed sector stuck in old ways of doing business.

Two education data myths are both very common and very destructive: Data=test scores; data-driven instruction is new. Let's break them down.