I first heard about The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce on Will Richardson’s blog. He tells us that the full 200+ page study from the National Center on Education and the Economy will be released on Amazon this Friday. You can read the summary by downloading the PDF.
Two choice [...]

Arguments against the existence of the Holocaust are nothing new, but an officially sponsored “conference” where the issue is “debated” only among those already in agreement takes bigotry and intentional ignorance to a new level.
From The New York Times:
Iran held a gathering that included Holocaust deniers, discredited scholars and white supremacists from around the world [...]

Lots of people seem to be blogging about the latest education article in Time magazine, titled “How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century.” (You can’t get to the full article without a subscription, but your public library has access to tons of online databases … it’s worth the few minutes of [...]

For about five years, I’ve been running an online community with a few teachers and their students at my school. This year, as “Web 2.0″ continues to expand our educational options, I’ve started finding ways to wrap some of these features into the site, and I’m very excited about the tools we can offer [...]

I had a great time listening in (and adding a few words) to the Skypecast tonight on EdTechTalk.com. (You can read background information and grab podcasts from TeachersTeachingTeachers.org). I was greatful to be invited into the conversation and my head’s still swimming with ideas from tonight’s talk.
The subject for the evening revolved around [...]

The Brooklyn Free School is an “institutional” example of “unschooling”that I wrote about a few days ago. My same agreements and concernsapply to both, and some of my concerns are apparently shared by parents andorganizers of the free school, evidenced by a few requirements that are startingto creep in:
Students will soon have to meet [...]

Clarence Fisher posted his “Mini-Manifesto for Classrooms 2.0” on his blog yesterday. I’ve been working on a manifesto, too … but on my wiki (so I can keep changing it … plus, I don’t have the time or discipline right now to craft a 500-word-or-less version). I particularly like what he has to say about [...]

Home Schoolers Content to Take Children’s Lead - New York Times
Today’s New York Times carried an article about “unschooling,” a subculture in home schooling where the learning is led completely by the interests of the child.
a philosophy that is broadly defined by its rejection of the basic foundations of conventional education, including not only the [...]

I’ve been reading 2012 and just came across a passage that struck me as particularly helpful in thinking about how and why fiction works. The author, Daniel Pinchbeck, is quoting F. David Peat and discussing the concept of synchronicity, that phenomenon that is usually brushed off as “just a weird coincidence.” Peat says:
It [...]

I don’t always agree with Jay Matthews, and definitely don’t agree with his ranking system that relies almost exclusively on test scores, but I do agree with this comment from his recent article in the Washington Post:
Governors, as well as school board members, do have the power to make schools better, but very few have [...]