Podcast 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.

We used these Google tools in our schools and saw tangible results soar

Authors’ Note: We’re often asked by educators, “what impact do you see with Google technology in schools?” Last year we engaged Evergreen Education Group on a journey around the world to answer that question. During Education on Air on Sunday December 3rd, we will share the findings in Impact Portraits. These case studies demonstrate the success with Google for Education through the lens of teachers, students and administrators. To hear Linda Darling-Hammond lead a discussion on Impact Portraits, register now for Education On Air.

At Evergreen Education Group we’ve studied K-12 digital education for sixteen years. Among the most important developments we have seen is the proliferation of devices in the classroom, whether through bring-your-own-device, district-led one-to-one programs, or other channels. However, relatively little study to date has examined how devices are successfully deployed and what their impact has been.

Getting Real Input from the Ground…Read More

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A new way to evaluate teachers — by teachers

Teacher education has been under siege in the last few years, the first line of attack in the growing criticism and more aggressive regulation of higher education, says Stanford University Education Profession Linda Darling-Hammond, who directs the Stanford University Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and was founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Education proposed — in a highly contentious negotiated rule-making exercise — to use test scores of graduates’ students to evaluate schools of education, despite the warnings of leading researchers that such scores are unstable and invalid for this purpose. Furthermore, in an unprecedented move, the department would limit eligibility for federal TEACH grants to prospective teachers from highly rated programs, denying aid to many deserving candidates while penalizing programs that prepare teachers for the most challenging teaching assignments. This was only the most recent example of how education reformers have made teachers and teacher education a punching bag, painting those in the entire field as having low standards and being unwilling to accept responsibility for the quality of their work…

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Opinion: Why Is Congress redlining our schools?

Today a new form of redlining is emerging, says Stanford University Education Profession Linda Darling-Hammond, who directs the Stanford University Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and was founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF). If passed, the long-awaited Senate bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, better known in its current form as No Child Left Behind) would build a bigger highway between low-performing schools serving high-need students—the so-called “bottom 5 percent”—and all other schools. Tragically, the proposed plan would weaken schools in the most vulnerable communities and further entrench the problems—concentrated poverty, segregation and lack of human and fiscal resources—that underlie their failure…

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