Blogs on Education Reform

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Dr. Richard CurwinFebruary 13, 2012

There is an ongoing nationwide debate on the issue of merit pay for teachers. Many national policy makers and media pundits have essentially said, "How can we improve the quality of education if we don't reward the best and brightest teachers with more money?"

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Harold KwalwasserFebruary 10, 2012

Downtown Brownsville, Texas, has an otherworldly feel. Nestled in a crook in the Rio Grande near where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, the narrow streets are filled with stores selling cheap merchandise to Mexicans or to the poor from the local Hispanic community, which is often just a few years removed from the other side of the border.

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Geoff ButterfieldFebruary 1, 2012

I've always said, "I'll leave when the website is done, or the educational system is fixed," which made my colleagues giggle. Anyone who's ever worked on a big website like edutopia.org knows there's always something to do, just as anyone who's ever worked on education reform thinks Sisyphus is a big baby who should stop whining and get back to work. Over the years, GLEF has published projects in every conceivable medium, but there is one factor that never changed, the thread that binds all of our efforts, the not-so-secret sauce that makes all of our work meaningful.

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Anne OBrienDecember 16, 2011

As 2011 winds to a close, we are about to turn the page on a year that saw new evidence suggesting that the education reform policies du jour aren't really working. Most charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools (at least in Chicago); value-added modeling does not produce consistent, reliable measures of teacher effectiveness; and the school curriculum is narrowing, in part because of the pressures of state tests (according to teachers).

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Dale StephensDecember 16, 2011

I'm not just a college dropout. I chose to leave school in fifth grade to become an unschooler -- the self-directed form of homeschooler. While my peers sat in class during middle and high school, I found mentors, organized collaborative learning groups, took college courses, lived in France, helped build a library and generally directed my own education.

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Bob LenzDecember 14, 2011

A new social media tool is launching called The Hype that allows you to rate whether a movie, event, music person, place or product -- you name it -- is worth the hype or not.

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Virginia Goatley, PhDNovember 30, 2011

Brenda Overturf is a member of the International Reading Association's Board of Directors. You can reach her at boverturf[AT]reading[DOT]org.

In this series of three posts, we aim to provide an overview of the ELA Common Core State Standards (ELA CCSS) to inform educators, parents, and community members about basic concepts and implementation.

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Eric BrunsellNovember 9, 2011

As school districts across the country are working diligently to unpack and implement the Common Core Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts, another initiative has been steadily progressing. The initial public draft of the Next Generation Science Education Standards will be released in a few months.

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Bob LenzNovember 1, 2011

We continue our week long Virtual Deeper Learning Community of Practice where we hope to engage the Edutopia and larger education community in an online dialogue about teacher practice for deeper learning. We are exploring the following question from multiple perspectives -- exemplary practices, policy, professional development and coaching teachers towards deeper learning.

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Heather Wolpert-GawronNovember 1, 2011

I've been examining the Common Core Standards and the upcoming assessments lately in an attempt to tease apart this huge seismic shift that is about to go down. And while I think it will have its challenges, I have to admit that I like what I'm seeing. For one thing, they prioritize a more accurate alignment of school life versus real life, seeking to blur the lines more than ever.

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