Blogs on Education Trends

To kick off this week's curation, we'll start with something we published here at Edutopia: the last video in our Tech2Learn series. The videos, which were co-produced by Teaching Channel, look at inspiring ways educators use tech tools in the classroom.

As the nation embarks on a new school year, education leaders from President Obama on down are facing a renewed commitment to the STEM subjects -- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics -- as a driver of innovation. And what better advertisement of the power of STEM education than the recent landing of the Mars Rover? Like the original Apollo missions to the Moon, they powerfully reveal the magic of science and engineering. Just this summer, the Obama administration announced a laudable new "teacher corps" dedicated to excellence in the STEM subjects, and as far and wide as Estonia, a new policy is spurring debate about the value of teaching programming to elementary school students.

The film Won't Back Down is scheduled to open in wide release on September 28. Yet, weeks in advance of this date, there has been a veritable deluge of extremely strong emotional and critical responses. Both the film and the responses deserve our attention, because they are each symptomatic of the polarization that is plaguing both public education and national politics in this country. Every teacher and parent should see the film, but should also be fully prepared to view it critically.

Parent trigger laws have been attracting a lot of attention of lately. At least 18 states (some say 20) have considered legislation including parent trigger language over the past two years, with seven states enacting some version of a parent trigger. And a major motion picture set to release on September 28 chronicles a fictional account of a parent and teacher "pulling the trigger" to improve an elementary school.