Articles Tagged with policy

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The Common Core Standards are causing a lot of angst across the world of education.  Fortunately Brandt Redd is here to help.

Over at Of That he lays it all out in a lucid and well linked overview “The Common Core State Standards – For My Concerned Friends.”   He cuts through the BS clearly and cleanly and describes how CCSS fits in the overall scheme of the Gates Foundation’s vision for personalized education.

Last week’s announcement by the Republican National Committee (RNC) that they are opposed to CCSS has added to the uncertainty hanging over the direction of the market in the next 3-4 years.  If CCSS becomes more than minor skirmish in the political wars we’ll have a period of extended uncertainty about how materials should be crafted.  The angry maw of lens hungry politicians could make a six course meal of various conspiracy theories.

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56u6u6uEd Note: One of my favorite thinkers and practitioners on engaging kids deeply with Math and Science is Jim Bower. Jim is that rare combination of theorist and practitioner who is successful in both realms. He is both a Professor of Neuroscience at UTSA and the Founder/CEO of Whyville.net, arguably the stickiest web destination for learning ever created.

Jim has strong opinions, but he has earned the right to hold them through deep thinking and risk taking that applies his theories successfully in the real/virtual world.

Please invest the time to read Jim’s post where he challenges us to see why the web is making us smarter, not dumber. The TEDx video then answers the question of exactly how you do this.

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fail-owned-my-first-failMy last post on the difficulty of educational reform got me thinking about that other massive system we are trying to reform – healthcare. One way to understand the healthcare system is to compare it to education – where we have had universal single payer access for over 100 years.

In that vein – what would education look like if if it were run like the healthcare system? By transporting our healthcare practices to another environment we can strip away the patina of familiarity and acceptance and see some of the insanity in our system in a harsher light.

Well meaning people can disagree strongly on the specifics of what is needed (and they do). I found as I wrote this that I had to examine my own pre-conceived notions. For example – state funding for education creates some of the same problems the system of private monopolies in medical insurance forces us to wrestle with. The public option in healthcare is the mirror image of charter schools in education – both aim to open up competition and provide alternatives.

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Doug Stein of Memespark responded in comments to my last post and as usual his insights add a lot to the conversation and make the connection to education publishing more relevant and real. For that reason I’ve bumped this comment to its own post.

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let-the-stress-begin.jpgBy Doug Stein

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