Just as wise investors diversify their investment portfolio, so should we build diverse portfolios of our schools. This means that we should not invest too heavily in any one strategy. If we do not know with any precision what the future will be, we cannot have one-size-fits-all schools. We need to expand our ecologies of options.
FORGET SCALING UP.
WE NEED TO SCALE SIDEWAYS IN EDUCATION.
If the ultra wealthy are concerned about America’s competitiveness, the schools aren’t failing. They’re failing the schools. The nation’s ranking on the PISA tables continues to slip, but if we control for poverty, we’re darn near the top.
Norman Augustine, former chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp. and lead author of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5, appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box last Friday: From the report’s description: So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm book was prepared? The unanimous [...]
Nothing is more political than education. The Texas State Board of Education reminded us of the phenomenon this month, rewriting textbook guidelines to match their conservative, theological worldviews. Not since the Kansas Board of Education voted to restrict the teaching of evolution has an entire state backlashed so strongly against science and reason. In an [...]
Ken Robinson goes on the offensive against standardized testing in a post-industrial society … and hits the issue on the head:
In this video from The UpTake forwarded to Education Futures from Bring Me the News, President Obama speaks on the relationship between education and national competitiveness (you can skip the introductions and jump to his talk which begins around 6:20 into the video): President Obama: “So make no mistake: Our future is on the line. [...]
This year, Minnesota 2020 has released some exciting critiques of the state of education in Minnesota and nationally. And, by “exciting,” I mean sometimes scathing critiques … with a glimmer of hope. At the top of their hit list (and rightfully so) is No Child Left Behind. This morning, they blogged: Last fall, the prestigious [...]
About an hour ago, Maya Frost tweeted something utterly disturbing: Not So Global: Share of US public elementary schools teaching foreign language classes drops by 40% in last decade http://tinyurl.com/ak4at9 From the linked article (via Public School Insights): The share of U.S. public elementary schools teaching foreign language has fallen by almost 40% over the [...]
An interesting conversation on creativity is emerging on the blogosphere. Many people saw Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk on reintroducing creativity into schools, and undermine assembly line approaches to creating automatons out of students. On Sunday, North Carolina 6th grade teacher Bill Ferriter countered, “Creativity is dead, Ken,” and outlined barriers in his classroom that [...]
Views and opinions expressed in this publication are strictly those of the post authors.
Unless otherwise noted, all content in Education Futures is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Feedback