Education

Innovation of the Week: Education 2.0

Podcast: Innovation of the Week: Education 2.0 (Audio)

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Schools experiment with paying kids

Schools, under pressure to boost student achievement, are offering incentives - field trips and cash, for example - to motivate students.

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Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track by Russell Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg

For too long, we have educated people for a world that no longer exists, extinguishing their creativity and instilling values antithetical to those of a free, 21st century democracy. The principal objective of education as currently provided is to ensure the maintenance and preservation of the status quo--to produce members of society who will not want to challenge any fundamental aspects of the way things are.

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No Child Left Behind Lacks Bite

13 MAY 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

The troubles in the school-restructuring arena reflect broader questions about whether No Child Left Behind is a strong enough tool to bring about the overhaul of American education. (Subscription required)

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Not all :) as informal writing creeps into teen assignments

NEW YORK (AP) -- It's nothing to LOL about: Despite best efforts to keep school writing assignments formal, two-thirds of teens admit in a survey that emoticons and other informal styles have crept in....

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Business Schools: A Study in Failure

Devotion to traditional subjects means leadership, social responsibility, ethics, and a global view get short shrift in the MBA curriculum.

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It's time to study the value of college

College education costs continue to soar at the same time studies show college graduates getting paid less. Commentator David Frum says Americans should re-examine the real value of a college degree in today's economy.

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Textbook costs getting hard to cover

A growing chunk of college costs is the price of textbooks, on which the typical undergraduate spends $900 a year. So a group of college professors is calling for low-priced and free texts online. Congress is getting involved, too. Jill Barshay reports.

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Not on the test

Folk songs protesting government policy haven’t been in vogue since I was a toddler. But Tom Chapin, who performs in the video below, might just have singlehandedly revived the tradition.

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Does Computing Add Up in the Classroom?

A new report, however, recommends well-designed computer instruction as a way to nurture greater fluency in math and understanding of math concepts. (Subscription required)

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Low Grad Rates in US Cities

Seventeen of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday....

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Public Schools Expand Curriculum Online

Students across the country are heading online for classes their public schools don't teach. In Virginia, a virtual program allows small schools to offer more advanced placement classes and compete with private schools, which use AP courses as a selling point. (Audio)

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Certifying Parents

22 MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

In the annals of judicial imperialism, we have arrived at a strange new chapter. A California court ruled this month that parents cannot "home school" their children without government certification. No teaching credential, no teaching. Parents "do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," wrote California appellate Justice Walter Croskey.

Hat tip: Freakonomics

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Massachusetts Makes Strides in Math Curriculum

The "fuzzy" math lessons that kids come home with drive parents crazy and confuse even teachers. Two years ago, the Bush administration asked a panel of experts to bring more coherence and depth to the math curriculum. But only one state has even come close to doing what the panel envisions: Massachusetts. (Audio)

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Life Expectancy Tied to Education

In U.S., college-educated live longer than those who only finish high school, study finds.

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High Schools Add Classes Scripted by Corporations

06 MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Lockheed, Intel fund engineering courses; creating a work force. (Subscription required)

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Teaching Boys and Girls Separately

The idea is gaining traction in American public schools, in response to the different education crises girls and boys have been reported to experience. (Subscription required)

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Student Life Today

"A Vision of Students Today" is a short video created by Michael Wesch, Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University, with the collaboration of 200 KSU students that summarizes how technology is changing the way students learn today. The video forces us to reconsider our understanding of pedagogy and traditional educational institutions, as well as the mentalities, behaviors, and goals of today’s students. (Video )

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Business Schools Break Tradition in Global Education

California business schools are taking global education to a new level, offering courses that go beyond case studies and collaborating with universities abroad, particularly in Asia. (Subscription required)

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Stanford Waives Tuition for Middle-Class Students

Stanford University says it will no longer charge tuition to undergraduates whose parents earn less than $100,000 a year. For students whose parents make less than $60,000, the university will also waive room and board costs. (Audio)

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Film raises troubling questions about U.S. students

The brainchild of Memphis businessman Robert Compton, Two Million Minutes takes its title from the amount of time most students spend in high school absorbing, one hopes, enough math, science, literature and history to compete in an increasingly flat, competitive world.

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What's in a Beethoven Quartet? A Full Curriculum

12 FEB 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

In an unusual educational experiment Curtis [Institute of Music] has established Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 11 in F minor (Op. 95) as the touchstone of the academic year for its 160 students. Imagine a year of medical school revolving around the liver, or a car repair course centered on the Chrysler LeBaron.

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Running a college on the avant garde

Explaining John Maeda is not a simple job. Maeda makes sculptures out of iPods, designs shoes for Reebok, and helps Samsung Electronics create engaging retail environments. He speaks at Google and Yahoo about the value of simplicity in the tech world.

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Online Schooling Grows, Setting Off a Debate

Half a million American children take classes online, and many attend virtual public schools that compete with districts for financing. (Subscription required)

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'No Child' Law Picked Apart as Renewal Fight Looms

The No Child Left Behind Act -- which Congress approved with overwhelming bipartisan support -- is now drawing sharp bipartisan opposition. The law is up for reauthorization, and many -- including those who originally supported it -- are pointing out its flaws. (Audio)

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Fla. schools approve free, online reading program

Elementary school teachers in Florida this fall will be the first in the nation to have access to a free, state-approved online reading program.

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First, Kill All the School Boards

JAN/FEB 2008 from the Atlantic | Read the full story»

A modest proposal to fix the schools.

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Employers want new way to judge graduates beyond tests, grades

Colleges have been scrambling over the past year to respond to recommendations from a national commission that they be clearer to the public about what students have learned by the time they graduate.

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Matching donors & classroom needs

It's no secret that many public schools are underfunded and lack supplies, but the enormity of the problem can easily overwhelm those interested in helping. DonorsChoose.org aims to divide and conquer that challenge with a crowdfunding approach that matches potential donors with specific classroom needs.

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Teaching kids to tackle personal finance

High school students in seven states are learning some rules of personal finance through a program sponsored by the NFL and Visa called "Financial Football." Jeff Tyler has the play-by-play.

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Is that a college-tuition price war?

Several universities recently announced big increases in financial aid. Commentator Kim Clark says it looks like things may be starting to turn in students' favor.

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Professors help students virtually

The days when students had to trek across campus to get professors' help during "office hours" may be slipping away.

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Albert Shanker's National Fight for Teachers

The late Albert Shanker, a teachers union president, argued vigorously that the unions -- which politicans have blamed for standing in the way of reforms -- needed to prove their critics wrong. A new book examines why his ideas have had such a lasting impact on schools, unions and politics. (Audio)

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Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy India’s Schools

Worried about its ability to compete with Asian rivals, Japan is in the midst of a craze for Indian education. (Subscription required)

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Ivy League Universities Open Courses to All Online

An MIT initiative called "OpenCourseWare" makes virtually all the school's courses available online for free, and more than 100 universities worldwide, including Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Notre Dame, are joining MIT in a consortium of schools promoting their own open courseware.

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What Should Be Done About Standardized Tests?

So what should be done? We gathered a group of testing afficionados — W. James Popham, Robert Zemsky, Thomas Toch, Monty Neill, and Gaston Caperton — and put to them the following questions: Should there be less standardized testing in the current school system, or more? Should all schools, including colleges, institute exit exams? Here are their responses.

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Education: Goal-Oriented Gaming

PETLab, a research lab at the Parsons School of Design, seeks to find ways through which video games can further educational pursuits, particularly with regard to social causes. The article about the study, which can be found at eSchool News, mentions the example of military training, which has incorporated games that simulate possible situations that troops might face. Apparently, training games have also made their way into the classroom as tools for teachers and administrators.

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Log in, enter password, read a textbook

A shift toward digital textbooks for kindergarten through high school not only is updating the way students learn, it's changing the business model for Pearson, one of the world's largest publishers of school textbooks.

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Baltimore's 'innovation schools' yield higher test scores

The five-year effort to break Baltimore's big high schools into smaller, more autonomous schools seems to be paying off with better academic results and attendance, offering new evidence backing a reform that has stalled nationwide in recent years.

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Teacher qualifications improve in the past decade

Beginning teachers have better academic credentials than their predecessors did a decade ago, suggesting that tougher requirements ...

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Business Schools Adjust To the Millennial Generation

Daphne Atkinson of the Graduate Management Admission Council discusses today's M.B.A. students and their 'helicopter' parents.

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The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes

24 NOV 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

On one hand, as children we’re taught that everyone makes mistakes and that the great thinkers and inventors embraced them. Thomas Edison’s famous quote is often inscribed in schools and children’s museums: “I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”

On the other hand, good grades are usually a reward for doing things right, not making errors. Compliments are given for having the correct answer and, in fact, the wrong one may elicit scorn from classmates.

We grow up with a mixed message: making mistakes is a necessary learning tool, but we should avoid them.

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A Vote for Latin

03 DEC 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

By HARRY MOUNT

The Heads of State

AT first glance, it doesn’t seem tragic that our leaders don’t study Latin anymore. But it is no coincidence that the professionalization of politics — which encourages budding politicians to think of education as mere career preparation — has occurred during an age of weak rhetoric, shifting moral values, clumsy grammar and a terror of historical references and eternal values that the Romans could teach us a thing or two about. As they themselves might have said, “Roma urbs aeterna; Latina lingua aeterna.”

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Illinois School Looks to Tech Tools to Teach

The University of Illinois hopes its new "global campus," set to launch early 2008, will reach more than 10,000 new online students in the next few years. At the university's campus in Springfield, Ill., faculty already use blogs and wikis in their courses. (Audio)

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Online Courses Catch On in U.S. Colleges

Nearly one in five college students takes at least one class online, according to a new survey. For professors, the growth of e-learning has meant a big shift in the way they deal with students and prepare for class, as well as the kinds of students they teach.

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English, Algebra, Phys Ed ... and Biotech

Some public high schools are giving students lab experiences that approach, or even exceed, those found in university settings. (Subscription required)

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Education: Dazed and Confused Over Metrics

What determines a good school? Usually the quantitative data -- most frequently standardized test scores and graduation rates -- carry the most weight in answering that question. On the qualitative side, there's student and parent satisfaction and teacher morale, among other factors. The key, as in all professions, is determining metrics -- figuring out how all of these different factors should be measured and calibrated. This past month, however, has included several stumbles in achieving this task in education.

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Reaching Out to Students When They Talk and Text

13 NOV 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Can the Bloomberg administration convince thousands of low-achieving students that succeeding in school is actually, well, cool?

It wants to try. The city is planning an intensive campaign that would use cellphones to help motivate students, most of them minorities and from poor families, in two dozen schools. The pilot program will include mentoring and incentives for high performance, like free concerts and sporting events and free minutes and ring tones for their phones. Every student in each of the schools will be given a cellphone.

Hat tip: PSFK

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Online space for kids, teachers & parents

Keeping kids at the head of the class often involves a joint effort by teachers, students and their parents—so it makes sense to get them all on the same page. The HotChalk Learning Environment does exactly that, using the convenience and versatility of an online community to complement the classroom experience for grades K-12.

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Boston High School: No College Plans, No Diploma

A Boston high school makes college acceptance a prerequisite to graduation. The school aims to offer inner-city students the same opportunities that their affluent counterparts get at private schools or in suburban districts. (Audio)

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Free online materials could save schools billions

Since March, Dixon Deutsch and his students have been quietly experimenting with a little website that could one day rock the foundation of how schools do business.

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Rethinking How to Teach the New Teachers

04 NOV 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

According to many education experts, new teachers feel so ill prepared that a staggering 50 percent of them bolt during their first five years of teaching. To help stop the exodus, the Reach Institute for School Leadership, a group based in Napa, Calif., has started an innovative program, designed by and for teachers, that has the potential to transform those first stressful years in the classroom. Reach’s newly accredited, two-year teacher credentialing program has a goal of attracting a new generation of committed teachers, mentors and school administrators — and keeping them for a lifetime. (Subscription required)

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The Science Education Myth

26 OCT 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support.

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The Way We Live Now: What Every Child Needs

How universal pre-K could benefit middle- and upper-class children as much as poor ones. (Subscription required)

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Education 'Fix'

The connection between local education and local development is broken. Something else is going on. It's important to focus the conversation on what exactly that might be.

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The Audience Participates

[T]he order, structure and scheduling imposed by the educational environment (that still exists) has been entirely subverted by the behaviors and actions of the restless participants in these classes. What is clear is that this "audience" is fundamentally different to all that have come before. It is participative. Active. Engaged. And more networked than Google.

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The wikipedia gap

Please don't tell me that Wikipedia isn't a real encyclopedia or one that can't be trusted. Perhaps it can't be trusted if you're prepping for a Presidential debate, but it is sure good enough to help me learn what I need to learn--which is how to quickly take a bunch of facts and turn them into a new and useful idea.

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Education: Making the Classroom Hot

"School" and "cool" rhyme, but, sadly, you probably won't find the two together in any sentence uttered by today's students. With growing adoptions of the latest technology in the classroom, however, educators are trying hard to change that.

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Study: Parents play big role in academic success

Whether low-income, urban students attend a public or private high school matters less to their academic success than whether their parents take part in their education, earn enough money to offer enriching experiences and have high aspirations for their kids, a study from an education advocacy group suggests.

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Management Education's Unanswered Questions

How has management education evolved, and where is it going? This question is of crucial importance for society, says HBS professor Rakesh Khurana. Business leaders are admired yet often distrusted, and the idea of management as a profession is similarly on shaky ground—as it has been for more than 100 years. The situation may be due in large part to the role of university-based business education from the founding of the Wharton School in 1881 and continuing right up to the present.

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How kids can get over the 'motivation brick wall'

Richard Lavoie is widely known for a popular PBS video and workshops that show teachers what school is really like for struggling students.

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Campus launches YouTube channel

Campus launches YouTube channel — Further expanding public access to its intellectual riches through the most popular Web destinations, the University of California, Berkeley, announced today (Wednesday, Oct. 3) that it is making entire course lectures and special events available, free of charge, on YouTube.

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Marketing the M.B.A. Degree To Nonbusiness Professionals

Harvard Business School is launching new program that aims to attract and lock in more liberal-arts candidates while they're undergrads.

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Virtual Schooling Growing at K-12 Level

As a seventh-grader, Kelsey-Anne Hizer was getting mostly D's and F's and felt the teachers at her Ocala middle school were not giving her the help she needed. But after switching to a virtual school for eighth grade, Kelsey-Anne is receiving more individual attention and making A's and B's. She's also enthusiastic about learning, even though she has never been in the same room as her teachers....

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Back to School 2.0

05 SEP 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Education projects such as the Aspirnaut Initiative aim to harness technology to better prepare U.S. students to compete in the global economy.

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Microsoft's Class Action

Across the country, talent-hungry corporations are trying to save our struggling public schools. Are they creating smarter kids--or a fleet of drones?

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With Turnover High, Schools Fight for Teachers

27 AUG 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term. (Subscription required)

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Even homework gets outsourced

Globalization has reached grade school. Thanks to the Internet and a little entrepreneurial spirit, some students are getting help with their studies from tutors on the other side of the world. Francesca Segre reports.

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The Personal MBA Manifesto

14 AUG 2007 from the Personal MBA Manifesto | Read the full story»

Josh Kaufman has updated his Personal MBA reading list for 2007.

Hat tip: Seth Godin

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High School Students Find Economics Hard

For the first time, the federal government is testing U.S. high school students on how much they understand economics. The results were surprising. Only half knew that banks use deposits to make loans to other customers. Half also understood the basic principles of global trade. (Audio)

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Two Words for College Grads: Carbon Emissions

Britain's University of East Anglia is about to offer the world's first business degree in reducing carbon emissions. The idea is to train a new kind of manager for the so-called "low-carbon economy." (Audio)

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Gates Foundation's Education Chief Controls Billions

Portland, Ore., schools superintendent Vicki Phillips starts her job as education director at the Bill and Melinda Gates' Foundation on Wednesday. With more than $3 billion in grant money to give away, Phillips has one of the most powerful K-12 jobs in the country. (Audio)

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Certain Degrees Now Cost More at Public Universities

29 JUL 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Should an undergraduate studying business pay more than one studying psychology? Should a journalism degree cost more than one in literature? More and more public universities, confronting rising costs and lagging state support, have decided that the answers may be yes and yes. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Freakonomics Blog

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Want to go to biz school? Dust off PowerPoint skills

At business meetings the world over, PowerPoint-style presentations are often met with yawns and glazed eyes. But at one of the world's top business schools, such slide shows are now an entrance requirement.

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Funds for Reading First Program in Peril

Congress wants to slash funding for "Reading First," in part because the program has been attacked for conflicts of interests. But teachers love the program, and say it's one of the most effective parts of No Child Left Behind. (Audio)

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Cake, but No Presents Please

27 JUL 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

CRANFORD, N.J., July 22 — At Gavin Brown’s 4th birthday party ... There were 44 guests and ... an elaborate ice cream cake adorned with a fire truck. ... But the only gift in sight was a little red Matchbox hook and ladder rig. All the bounty from Gavin’s birthday — $240 in checks and cash collected in a red box next to a plastic fire helmet — went to the Cranford Fire Department. (Subscription required.)

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Spellings favors wiggle room for schools

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings on Wednesday proposed "a more nuanced" way of evaluating schools under President Bush's No Child Left Behind school reform law — one that would differentiate between schools that are close to meeting state math, reading and science standards and those that are "chronic, chronic underperformers."

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Few States Promote Entrepreneur Education in Schools

Only New York and California require that high school students take entrepreneurship classes.

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Why Teaching of Ethics Continues To Be Lacking at Business Schools

Ron Alsop on the challenge of incorporating more content related to social responsibility in M.B.A. programs.

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In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind

As summer looms, students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment in what is known as mindfulness training. (Subscription required)

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California Schools Collect Student Data to Help Kids

A school in California's wine country is hoping to benefit from the same techniques used to improve the state's wines. Just as wine growers constantly monitor their grapes, the school hopes to collect huge amounts of data on how its students are progressing. (Audio)

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Stanford Works to Groom Future Business Leaders

Ron Alsop talks to a new director at the university about the growing emphasis on management in b-school curriculums.

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The Way We Live Now: Standardizing the Standards

A good nationwide test of students’ abilities would a) help kids learn, b) encourage teachers to innovate, c) save money or d) all of the above. (Subscription required)

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Corporate Tuition Funding Appears to Keep Workers Loyal

A growing body of research concludes that paying for employees' education makes them more likely to stay.

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'Resistance to science' has early roots

Stem cells, global warming, evolution, vaccination — why do some scientific ideas push political and societal hot buttons? Proving that scientists can study practically anything, a pair of psychologists considered "resistance to science" as a subject in its own right.

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More conflicts disclosed in Reading First program

Officials who gave states advice on which teaching materials to buy under a federal reading program had deep financial ties to publishers, according to a congressional report Wednesday.

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At MIT's Business School, Big Changes Are Underway

The dean of the Sloan School of Management, who is preparing to relinquish his post, discusses trends in the M.B.A. market and more.

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Leadership begins at school

Whether or not you agree with legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi that leaders aren't born but made through hard work, what's increasingly clear is that it is at school that most leaders get their the first taste of leadership.

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Interactive design blooms in NYU hallways

Students in university's Interactive Telecommunications Program take on challenge of creating innovative multimedia designs.

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Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold

Even as women approach or exceed enrollment parity in mathematics, biology and other fields, their presence in computer science is static or even shrinking. (Subscription required)

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Confessions of a B-school citizen marketer

Positioning is a marketing facade that paints a picture idealized by the marketer, not necessarily the customer.

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From the Playground to the Boardroom: The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

During a recent visit to my son's 4th grade classroom, I was pleasantly surprised to hear many of the teachers discussing how to increase the level of empathy and social skills in their students.

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M.B.A.s Don't Prepare Managers For Real-Life Challenges

A new survey of international executives found that while the degree provides the strong general education that an executive needs, it doesn't teach the skills needed in the day-to-day operation of a business.

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More Colleges Nuture Business Aspirations

Small business is becoming a big deal on college campuses these days.

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New Effort to Tap Technology to Aid the Service Economy

The creation of the Service Research and Innovation Initiative represents the latest step to promote an emerging field called “service science.” (Subscription required)

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GAO: Reading program improperly managed

Education Department officials and their contractors appear to have improperly backed certain types of instruction in administering a $1 billion-a-year reading program, congressional investigators found.

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Start-Up Success Tied to Education

The education level of local populations can have a direct impact on businesses, research shows.

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Senate leaders seek funding boost for U.S. math, science education

A high-profile group of U.S. senators, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have proposed a bill designed to bolster American "competitiveness" by upping federal investments in math, science and technology education and research.

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Fixing No Child Left Behind

The No Child Left Behind education law is up for renewal this year, and an independent commission recently released some recommendations for improvement. (Subscription required)

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Quirky Essays a Window to Future Success?

Tufts University is trying to spot the future leaders in its vast pool of applicants by assigning optional essays on offbeat topics. Other colleges are doubtful of the experiment, but watching with interest. (Audio)

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Colleges Want to Cool Admissions Frenzy

College presidents are trying to reduce the frenzy surrounding the admissions process through small changes. The goal is to reduce anxiety among applicants and offer more help for low-income students who want to go to selective schools. (Audio)

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Who's Your City - Schools Edition

From today's Wall Street Journal: "Across the country, a small but growing number of parents ... are dramatically altering their families' lives to pursue the perfect private school for their children. ... The phenomenon is driven by rapid changes in technology, which give many parents geographic latitude with their jobs."

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Paul Barsch: An Ivy League Marketing Education for Free?

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is spearheading a movement of major universities to put online lecture notes, coursework and required readings for MBA courses and other classes on the internet—for no charge! Why would prestigious universities consider giving away some of their intellectual property? The answer might surprise you.

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M.B.A. Programs Hone 'Soft Skills'

Some business schools are devoting more time to topics such as teamwork leadership and communicating.

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Students' View of Intelligence Can Help Grades

A new study in the journal Child Development shows that if you teach students that their intelligence isn't fixed -- that it can grow and increase -- they do better in school. (Audio)

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Sheepwalking

I define "sheepwalking" as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line.

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"UpTick" Brings Wall Street Pressure to Students

In a Harvard Business School classroom, students in the Dynamic Markets class may have one minute to make a decision in a pressure cooker one called "the most stress I've experienced in ten years."

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Study Looks at Longer Day for Public Schools

There are many approaches to improving education in urban districts. But maybe students just need to spend more time in school? A new study examines the trend toward extending the public-school day. (Audio)

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Congress Balks at Bush's Education Plan

President Bush began his presidency with a strong focus on education, but the area's priority level has since fallen. The administration's new budget pledges more money for some higher education grants. But Congress is already objecting to the proposed means of financing. (Audio)

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Oklahoma school auctions tuition on eBay

One student nex