A Great Conference on Educator Effectiveness!

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It was an honor to be the opening keynote speaker at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ first SCEE National Summit on Educator Effectiveness on April 22, 2011.  It was an even greater honor to have Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education be not only distributed to all attendees but to be the actual reference point for the 50 facilitators who led all the round table discussions. Read the rest of this entry »

Rethinking the Calendar (ShiftEd21: #9)

While research about the real impact of year-round schooling – and potentially adding days to the calendar – is still somewhat limited and often contradictory, the idea has gained a lot of momentum over the past several years. Notably, President Obama is among its vocal advocates. In Shift Ed, we argue in favor of year-round schooling, but with the caveat that some of the other changes we favor – especially tighter integration of schools into communities – are critical for it achieve the desired results.

The following video highlights some of the major points in the debate over rear-round schooling, and covers one of the major arguments in its favor – that it can help prevent learning loss, particularly in students from low income families.

If you are interested in a more in-depth discussion of the topic, covering pros and cons, we recommend Who Benefits from Summer Vacation?, an audio interview on the North Carolina Public Radio show The State of Things.

As always, please share what you think.

Shift Ed is Here!

Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education is now hot off the presses from Corwin. Be sure to check out the introduction here on the site, and to order the full version, visit the Corwin Web site or Amazon.com. And be sure to subscribe to this Web site by RSS or e-mail [Read Full Post]

What We Know Works (ShiftEd21: #8)

The history of “reforming” schools is peppered with trends and gimmicks. These come and go while the problems remain. One of the key points we make in Shift Ed, however, is that we already know a great deal about what works in K-12 education. We just don’t do a thorough, consistent job of applying our [Read Full Post]

Connecting the Classroom (ShiftEd21 #7)

One of the things we found as we conducted research for Shift Ed is that it was relatively hard to find concrete examples of effective use of technology in classrooms (i.e., not just “This tool could be used for …,” but examples of the tools being used by teachers and students in an actual school). [Read Full Post]

Shift Ed is Coming!

We’re still waiting on a firm publication date from Corwin, but you can expect Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education to come rolling off the presses within the next 60 days. So how can you make sure you are among the first to know when this dynamic new perspective on education [Read Full Post]