Today, the New York Times reports that, “the rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans,” rapidly outpacing increases in family income … and even outpacing increases in health care expenses. Citing a report by the National Center for Public Policy and [...]

Yesterday, HBS Working Knowledge posted an interview with Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School and author or coauthor of five books, including The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution. The interview focused on his latest book (co-authored with Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson), Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the [...]

Few topics are as political as education, in which at least basic schooling is compulsory for all Americans. It is fitting, then, that we conclude this week’s focus on change with a look at the changes that presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama each propose for U.S. education. After analyzing educational policy statements on [...]

Phil Plait says it better: The Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed a bill that says that a student can receive a passing grade in an Earth Science class if they say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the Earth an hour ago, and then planted false memories into every single living creature on Earth [...]

Calú twittered this yesterday evening: Declaración de Ciudad del Cabo para la Educación Abierta http://tinyurl.com/2uob4w The English version of the document can be found here. In short, Mark Shuttleworth’s foundation and the Open Society Institute are launching a campaign to “transform education” by calling for open, free educational resources to be placed online: According to [...]

Two grant opportunities for innovators in education landed on my desk recently. The first is a little bit of old news: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently announced a public competition that will award $2 million in funding to emerging leaders, communicators, and innovators shaping the field of digital media and learning. [...]

Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), the lawmaker behind the pork-barrel Bridge to Nowhere and an infamous revelation that the Internet is constructed of a series of tubes is at it again. This time, he wants to ban Wikipedia at schools that receive federal funding. From Computerworld: Early in January, Stevens introduced Senate bill 49, which among [...]

I’ve been participating on the Minneapolis Public Schools Technology Planning Steering Committee. The committee has adopted the Leapfrog Paradigm and leapfrog thinking into its planning. Leaping frogs are showing up in presentations, and leapfrog is becoming a metaphor for creativity in the district. The committee’s work has, however, thus far focused on discussion on the [...]

Last Friday, 26 leaders from Minnesota’s PreK-17 spectrum gathered for the second meeting of the Horizon Forum. Dr. Tom Tapper, superintendent of Owatonna Public Schools, presented a compelling argument that public education is nearing obsolescence. He states: Today, the system of public education has a choice: it either leads change, or is led by it. [...]