Earlier this year, Larry Cuban and I had a brief back-and-forth about the prospects for online learning — particularly with regards to helping/harming students most at-risk. Fortunately, Education Next has just published an article exploring this very issue.

In “Getting At-Risk Teens to Graduation: Blended learning offers a second chance,” June Kronholz writes about PerContinue Reading »

More from the National Conference of State Legislatures: “In FY09, 31 state pension plans were under the 80% level considered fiscally sound -Pew Ctr data #ncsl.” Check out more live tweeting from Kris Amundson.

School choice hits a roadblock—transportation. Students attending one of New Jersey’s 56 new Choice schools are stuck without transportation if they choose a school more than 20 Continue Reading »

It’s no secret that 206 teachers were fired last Friday in Washington, DC, including 65 teachers who earned a rating of “ineffective” on the District’s controversial evaluation system, IMPACT. DCPS fired an additional 141 teachers who scored “minimally effective” for a second consecutive year.

While it’s commendable that 55% of teachers rated Continue Reading »

A year ago, Adrian Fenty was the mayor of Washington, DC and Michelle Rhee was the chancellor of DC Public Schools. Rhee had made overhauling the DC system of teacher evaluation the centerpiece of her controversial and widely noted reforms. Instead of the standard system of seniority-based raises and nobody ever being fired for bad teaching, Rhee wanted to give the best teachers big raises and Continue Reading »

One word: “Unbelievable.”

That’s what Diane Ravitch tweeted today about our 2007 “Frozen Assets” report. Since Twitter’s 140 characters limits a real discussion, we’ve invited Ms. Ravitch to offer her specific critiques of the paper in a guest post on this blog.

From her tweets, Ms. Ravitch would like to stereotype the paper as another effContinue Reading »

Since a Diane Ravitch tweet linking to our 2007 paper, “Frozen Assets: Rethinking Teacher Contracts Could Save Billions for School Reform,” is going viral on a holiday weekend, I want to make sure nobody enjoying a few days off misses out.

Here’s Ms. Ravitch’s tweet:

Saving school $$$ by cutting teacher salaries & pensionsContinue Reading »

Stanford Emeritus Professor, education historian, and noted education technology realist/skeptic Larry Cuban sets out to throw a “dash of cold water on overheated hyperbole” around online and blended learning.

In his post, Cuban outlines two potential losses from the move towards more online learning. The first is equity:

And the losses? Another digital divide. StudentContinue Reading »

An article that made sweeping generalizations about whether traditional classroom learning “works” would be laughable: we understand that the specific details, program models, curriculum, and of course, teachers, matter. Yet, when discussing online learning, broad generalizations about radically different programs and teaching models are accepted at face value.

The recent NewContinue Reading »

Lots of buzz around blended learning — the idea that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to a forced choice between teachers and technology, but can strive to find the right combination of high tech and high touch teaching. If you want to understand what this looks like in practice, I recommend “Future Schools,” a new article from Education Next.

As we think about these Continue Reading »

The recent New York Times article, In Florida, Virtual Classrooms with No Teachers, takes us to Miami, where schools are using a blended learning approach: