Public schools may be suffering, but the private tutoring business—a $5 billion industry—is growing like gangbusters, The Week reports. Times may be tough for many Americans, but, as the quality of public education grows shakier, it still pays to be a tutor—or at least a corporate tutoring firm. While the rest of the economy has sputtered and stagnated, the “supplemental education” sector has grown tenfold over the last decade. Here, a brief guide, by the numbers to “America’s tutor boom”: $5 billion-Estimated size of the “supplemental education” sector…
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Textbook-free schools share experiences, insights

Nearly one year after a pilot program that put Virginia’s fourth, seventh, and ninth grade social studies curriculum on an iPad, Virginia state officials say they have learned much from the implementation.
The program, which is a collaboration between education publishing giant Pearson and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), was spawned from VDOE’s “Beyond Textbooks” initiative, which encourages schools to “explore the potential of wireless technology and digital textbooks to enhance teaching and learning.”
Now a year into the program, many challenges and benefits have emerged.…Read More