Search Results for: alpha school
Notes on Direct Instruction & Alpha School
Dylan Kane: Here’s my core prediction: Alpha School will not be the place where we finally unveil the holy grail of education technology, where 100 percent of students can learn from a computer. Alpha School will not be the place where Engelmann’s ideas scale to reach every student. Developing curriculum is an empirical science. Designing […]
Alpha School
Liberty The Alpha School model compresses what takes 6 hours + homework elsewhere (core academics) into about two hours a day of self-paced, mastery-oriented, adaptive computer-based learning, with adults acting more like coaches/guides than traditional teachers. The rest of the day is spent on projects and ‘life skills’ activities instead of conventional classroom lectures. They give the example […]
Rebuttal to the Alpha School review defending the existing educational system
Navi Kabra: Today, the opposition gets a chance. Here’s an article that could be seen as a rebuttal¹ to the Alpha School review, which essentially argues that all these exciting new experimental schools are bound to fail because they fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of schools. I think this article has some significant flaws, rambles a bit in […]
AI use among Gen Alpha students for schoolwork is increasing, despite some students perceiving it as risky
Staff Cao: According to a Pew Research Center studyreleased in January, more teenagers are using ChatGPT for their homework, with 26% of them age 13 to 17 reporting that they have used the AI service to help with their assignments this year, compared with 13% who used it two years ago. As traditional tech companies continue […]
1. Deep Dive: Alpha Performance vs. National Norms
liemandt: Across virtually every grade level (K-12) and subject, Alpha District’s average student is scoring better than 99% of individual students nationwide. Mathematics: The “Crown Jewel” Alpha’s math scores are the most significant outlier. In typical high-performing schools, growth slows as students reach older grades due to the “ceiling effect” (running out of test material). […]
What Public Schools and Parents Can Learn from a $40,000-a-Year Private School
Chad Aldeman: Texas’ Alpha school combines AI with content mastery and innovative approaches to motivating students. It could be a model worth studying. I spend my time looking at ways to improve public schools. So why have I been fascinated by a private school charging $40,000 a year in tuition? The AI-fueled Alpha program claims its students […]
a School That Embraces AI and Rejects DEI
Cara Lombardo: Billionaire Bill Ackman has a new fascination: a fast-growing private school that eschews lessons on diversity, equity and inclusion and uses artificial intelligence to speed-teach children in two hours. Alpha School is launching a New York City location in September, and the investor and social-media commentator has been acting as something of an […]
Learning is slower than you think, and that’s precisely the point. What AI-optimized schools fail to grasp about learning.
Nisheeth Vishnoi: The frontier has come home. The same engines that mastered games and folded proteins are now aimed at children—their minds, their time, their curiosity. Childhood itself, reframed: not as a journey to be nurtured, but a system to be streamlined. To its founders, this is progress. Why waste hours in lecture halls when […]
Michigan spent big to fix schools. The result: Worse scores and plenty of blame
Ron French, Mike Wilkinson & Isabel Lohman: Frustrated by declining academic performance in state schools, education leaders in 2015 announced an audacious goal: make Michigan a top 10 education state by 2025. “If 10 years from now we’re not a top 10 performing state, then shame on all of us,” said then-State Superintendent Brian Whiston.
Study: Alphabetical order of surnames may affect grading
By Jeff Karoub Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade. An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is […]
Machine-graded bubble sheets are the defining feature of American schools. Today’s kindergartners may never have to fill one out.
Matteo Wong: Through funding cuts and bumps, integration and resegregation, panics and reforms, world wars and culture wars, American students have consistently learned at least one thing well: how to whip out a No. 2 pencil and mark exam answers on a sheet printed with row after row of bubbles. Whether you are an iPad […]
K-12 Governance: School Books
EXPLICIT: Osseo parent reads from an explicit book available in Osseo district libraries and is stopped by the school board chair, saying that last time something like that was read, the “language was offensive to some.” pic.twitter.com/W3Cr7E2kOZ — Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) July 26, 2023 Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004– “Well, it’s kind of too […]
The “balanced-literacy” method of teaching children to read has predominated in American schools since the 1990s. It has been a failure.
Christine Smallwood: One night, while searching in the woods for food, Frankenstein’s monster discovers a leather suitcase containing three books: The Sorrows of Young Werther, Plutarch’s Lives, and Paradise Lost. Goethe is a source of “astonishment” but also alienation; the monster can sympathize with the characters, but only to a point—their lives are so unlike […]
The anxious generation — what’s bothering Britain’s schoolchildren?
Lucy Kellaway: In less than two weeks, 250,000 18-year-olds in England will turn up at school for one last time to collect a piece of paper on which three letters of the alphabet will be printed. These grades will sum up their academic achievement so far, will affect the rest of their education — and […]
My alma mater is not the school I once loved. But Joshua Katz is exactly the man I knew I married.
Solveig Lucia Gold We’ve run plenty of stories about people who have been the target of mobs—what’s happened to them and their challenges and resilience in the aftermath. What we’ve rarely heard—here or anywhere else—is what it’s like for the person who loves the mob’s target. What it’s like to watch someone you love being […]
Is your school in person, hybrid or virtual during the coronavirus pandemic? Check out our list.
Christopher Kuhagen and Alec Johnson: Is your school district in person, hybrid (mix of in person and virtual) or completely virtual? Check out our list, which we will update as changes happen during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Districts are listed alphabetically and include those in the Journal Sentinel and its suburban coverage area in southeast […]
Alphabet (google) bet big in Toronto. Toronto didn’t play along.
Brian Barth: In October 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke at a VIP-laden press event in Toronto to announce plans for a new neighborhood in the city to be built “from the internet up.” The big reveal was the builder: Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The mood was festive, […]
The Academy Overweights Co-Authored Articles, To The Detriment Of Women, Faculty Of Color, And Faculty With Surnames That Fall Later In The Alphabet
Linus Yamane: In light of the frequent campus climate issues of recent years, many of us in higher education have been thinking about inherent biases in our institutions’ appointment, promotion and tenure systems. How might faculty of color and women be systematically thwarted when they try to move up the academic labor market? One fundamental […]
Leaked document reveals that Sidewalk Labs’ Toronto plans for private taxation, private roads, charter schools, corporate cops and judges, and punishment for people who choose privacy
Cory Doctorow: Tomorrow, Toronto’s City Council will hold a key vote on Sidewalk Labs’s plan to privatize much of the city’s lakeshore in the name of creating a “smart city” owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Today, the Globe and Mail published a summary of Sidewalk Labs’s leaked “yellow book”, a 2016 document that lays […]
Civics: Alphabet Tries to Silence Conservative Investors As they Question Why Google’s Parent Company Silences Conservative Voices
Free Enterprise Project: Google, and its parent company Alphabet, continued its campaign to silence conservative speech today when it repeatedly cut off conservative speakers at its annual shareholder meeting while allowing liberal activists to violate meeting rules and decorum with impunity. Alphabet executives tried to squash a question from Free Enterprise Project (FEP) Director Justin […]
The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids
Erika Christakis Step into an American preschool classroom today and you are likely to be bombarded with what we educators call a print-rich environment, every surface festooned with alphabet charts, bar graphs, word walls, instructional posters, classroom rules, calendars, schedules, and motivational platitudes—few of which a 4-year-old can “decode,” the contemporary word for what used […]
Ivy League Schools Don’t Care About You and That’s an Education Right There
Matthew Strauss: One sleepless night during the fall semester of my sophomore year at Columbia University, I told my then-girlfriend that all my friends were better than me. I was just a boring guy, and they were all cool. My response: shave my beard (which I grew to update my identity post-high school) down to […]
Civics & School Systems: Google, an Obama ally, may face policy setbacks under Trump
By David Shepardson, Malathi Nayak and Julia Love Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google faces a tougher regulatory landscape as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration looks poised to reverse Obama administration policies that often favored the internet giant in the company’s battles with telecoms and cable heavyweights, analysts say. Google had close ties with outgoing Democratic […]
Creative schools
Robert Pondiscio: Every sentence in Sir Ken Robinson’s Creative Schools begins with a capital letter. There is also a punctuation mark at the end of each, without exception. I have made a careful study of his nearly three-hundred-page manuscript, and can now report conclusively that its author employs—precisely and exclusively—the twenty-six letters of the standard […]
Commentary on New Jersey’s School Equity Ruling’s 25th Anniversary
Laura Waters: Therefore, relying on local property taxes to fund schools is unconstitutional and adequate funding, including compensatory services for disadvantaged students in New Jersey’s poorest 29 districts, “must be guaranteed and mandated by the State.” (Those 29 districts were called “Abbott districts” because the first name on the alphabetical list of plaintiffs was Raymond […]
Minnesota leads the way on preschool education
The best ideas to put children on a path to school success rarely come from Washington.
President Barack Obama has put forward a plan to make high-quality preschool affordable for all children — a vital step in putting young people on a path to a thriving middle class. As I’ve seen firsthand in a pair of visits in the Minneapolis area, that effort builds on the work of states such as Minnesota.
The day began at Pond Early Childhood Family Center in Bloomington, Minn., where I sat with students who sang a song, recited the alphabet and discussed some of their favorite words.
The visit was an inspiring example of great educators helping children get ready for kindergarten in a setting of joy and support.
Later, Gov. Mark Dayton, Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius and other leaders from business, the military, government and the clergy joined a town-hall discussion at Kennedy Senior High School.
Dutch iPad Schools Seek to Transform Education
Plenty of schools use iPads. But what if the entire education experience were offered via tablet computer? That is what several new schools in the Netherlands plan to do. There will be no blackboards or schedules. Is this the end of the classroom?
Think different. It was more than an advertising slogan. It was a manifesto, and with it, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs upended the computer industry, the music industry and the world of mobile phones. The digital visionary’s next plan was to bring radical change to schools and textbook publishers, but he died of cancer before he could do it.
Some of the ideas that may have occurred to Jobs are now on display in the Netherlands. Eleven “Steve Jobs schools” will open in August, with Amsterdam among the cities that will be hosting such a facility. Some 1,000 children aged four to 12 will attend the schools, without notebooks, books or backpacks. Each of them, however, will have his or her own iPad.
There will be no blackboards, chalk or classrooms, homeroom teachers, formal classes, lesson plans, seating charts, pens, teachers teaching from the front of the room, schedules, parent-teacher meetings, grades, recess bells, fixed school days and school vacations. If a child would rather play on his or her iPad instead of learning, it’ll be okay. And the children will choose what they wish to learn based on what they happen to be curious about.
Preparations are already underway in Breda, a town near Rotterdam where one of the schools is to be located. Gertjan Kleinpaste, the 53-year-old principal of the facility, is aware that his iPad school on Schorsmolenstraat could soon become a destination for envious — but also outraged — reformist educators from all over the world.
And there is still plenty of work to do on the pleasant, light-filled building, a former daycare center. The yard is littered with knee-deep piles of leaves. Walls urgently need a fresh coat of paint. Even the lease hasn’t been completely settled yet. But everything will be finished by Aug. 13, Kleinpaste says optimistically, although he looks as though the stress is getting to him.
After Home Schooling, Pomp and Traditional Circumstances
The 26 young men and women, seated in alphabetical order, were nearly silent as they waited for their high school graduation to start. No giggles. No buzz. No camaraderie. And no wonder: they had met just once before, at the rehearsal two weeks earlier where they got their caps and gowns.
They had come on this muggy June evening to the Miami Zoo, past the flamingos and the tiger, for an hourlong ceremony that Gloria Rodriguez, the organizer, proudly called “the very first South Florida home-school graduation ever created.”
Ms. Rodriguez’s “home-school class of 2011” had no prom, no yearbook, no valedictorian. Still, for these students who had sidestepped a traditional education — and especially for their parents — there was “Pomp and Circumstance” and shiny turquoise tassels to shift from one side of a cap to the other.
Changes Schools Should Make to Better Serve Students: A Student’s View
I am at a loss as to the benefits of putting a group of people of approximately the same age — but of varying aptitudes — into one room where they will all learn the same thing. The quicker students will sit bored while the teacher re-explains a concept they already know from their voracious reading, while the slower students will be confused and left out by the rapid pace at which everyone else seems to be progressing.
International Program Catches On in U.S. Schools
The alphabet soup of college admissions is getting more complicated as the International Baccalaureate, or I.B., grows in popularity as an alternative to the better-known Advanced Placement program.
The College Board’s A.P. program, which offers a long menu of single-subject courses, is still by far the most common option for giving students a head start on college work, and a potential edge in admissions.
The lesser-known I.B., a two-year curriculum developed in the 1960s at an international school in Switzerland, first took hold in the United States in private schools. But it is now offered in more than 700 American high schools — more than 90 percent of them public schools — and almost 200 more have begun the long certification process.The Madison Country Day School has been recently accredited as an IB World School.
Rick Kiley emailed this link: The Truth about IB
Recession ‘hits private school’
BBC:
Another small private school has been closed because of falling roll numbers its owners say are linked to the recession.
Cliff School in Wakefield, ran by private school chain the Alpha Plus Group, is closing the school in July.
Pupil numbers are said to have fallen from 180 to 134 making its long term future unsustainable.
It is one of 21 small independent schools reported to have closed or been merged since January 2009.
Last week another small school in Sheffield, Brantwood School, said it would be closing unless additional funds could be found.
Software Tests Patience in Prince George County Schools
A $4.1 million computer program designed to put Prince George’s County students’ grades, attendance and discipline data online has been plagued with errors in its first year, leading to botched schedules, an over-count of students and report cards that were delayed or, in some cases, simply wrong.
Since going online Aug. 19, SchoolMax has crashed four times, once for 17 hours, said W. Wesley Watts Jr., the school system’s chief information officer. Errors led to the duplication of 3,600 student identification numbers in the 128,000-student system; almost 300 were double-enrolled, leading to an inaccurate count of the student population. The delivery of report cards was delayed last semester, and some students have found they’ve gotten E’s instead of A’s. There have been problems doing things as straightforward as printing an alphabetical directory of students.
The latest hit is a six-day delay in the distribution of third-quarter progress reports, which will be distributed Thursday “due to the closure of schools because of snow on March 2 and a recent computer network outage,” administrators said in a statement.
“There are a lot of issues with SchoolMax. Some of them are technical. Some of them are data-related,” Watts told the school board. “If there is an issue, we need to know what that issue is. Telling us the grade book doesn’t work, or it stinks, doesn’t help me or our team.”
A look at Chicago’s School Reforms
At Cameron Elementary School west of downtown, most kids don’t know the alphabet when they start kindergarten, nearly all are poor, and one was jumped by a gang recently, just off campus. But the school this year posted its highest reading and math scores ever — a feat that earned cash bonuses for teachers, administrators, even janitors.
City schools chief executive Arne Duncan, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for education secretary, pushed that performance-pay plan and a host of other innovations to transform a school system once regarded as one of the country’s worst. As Duncan heads to Washington, the lessons of Chicago could provide a model for fixing America’s schools.
“Obama chose Arne Duncan for a reason, and part of that reason is the experimentation that Duncan has done in Chicago and his real attention to data and outcomes,” said Elliot Weinbaum, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. “Duncan’s willing to try new things and see if they work, hopefully keep the ones that do and drop the ones that don’t. I expect that experimentation to continue on a national scale.”
America’s Best High Schools 2008
Madison School Superintendent Candidates
Madison School District Press Release:
Following their meeting this evening with Superintendent search consultants from Hazard, Young and Attea & Associates, Ltd., the Board of Education has selected five applicants as semifinalists for the position of Superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District.
In alphabetical order, the five applicants are:
- Dr. Bart Anderson, County Superintendent – Franklin County Educational Service Center, Columbus, Ohio [Clusty Search / Google Search / Live Search / Yahoo Search]
- Dr. Steve Gallon, District Administrative Director – Miami/Dade Public Schools, Miami, Florida [Clusty Search / Google Search / Live Search / Yahoo Search]
- Dr. James McIntyre, Chief Operating Officer – Boston Public Schools, Boston, Massachusetts [Clusty Search / Google Search / Live Search / Yahoo Search]
- Dr. Daniel Nerad, Superintendent of Schools – Green Bay Area Public School District, Green Bay, Wisconsin [Clusty Search / Google Search / Live Search / Yahoo Search ]
- Dr. Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard, Chief Academic Officer – Racine Unified School District, Racine, Wisconsin [Clusty Search / Google Search / Live Search / Yahoo Search]
The semifinalists were chosen from among 25 persons who sought the position currently held by Art Rainwater. Rainwater will retire on June 30, 2008, with the new Superintendent scheduled to begin on July 1.
Related Links:
- A petition to the school board on the superintendent hire.
- Desired Superintendent Characteristics.
- Event Tonight @ 6:30p.m.: Retiring Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater discusses K-12 school models.
Best High Schools 2008
We analyzed data from thousands of schools to produce our list of the nation’s best. The top schools are a diverse bunch, and each one has found its unique way to best teach our future leaders.
Wisconsin high schools can be found here. Andrew Rotherham has more, along with Maria Glod.
A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools
This is from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. I was alerted to it by the Daily Howler blog http://www.dailyhowler.com/. I mention this because that site has had some great education coverage lately and will soon be launching an all-education companion blog. http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-dropout30jan30,0,3211437.story?coll=la-news-learning THE VANISHING CLASS A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools […]
Is Middle School Bad For Kids?
More than half of eighth-graders fail to achieve expected levels of proficiency in reading, math and science on national tests.
Alphabet Soup
Student Photography: 117 pupils at John B. Dey Elementary School, armed with disposable cameras were sent to photograph the alphabet. Here’s a look at the project, from A to Z.
Notes on “ai” tutoring
Jonathan Bechtel: You recently mentioned the Alpha School and their claims about AI tutoring. I share the skepticism expressed in your comments section regarding selection bias and the lack of validated academic benchmarks. I wanted to highlight a more rigorously evaluated project called Tutor CoPilot, conducted jointly by Stanford’s NSSA and the online tutoring firm […]
The Misuses of the University
Francois Furstenberg: The aging history professor—his beard graying, his posture slouching—parks his 1997 Honda and walks to his office at Johns Hopkins. Along the way he passes two giant glass cubes that, for the last five years, have slowly risen on the edge of campus. Limp signs on the fencing announce the opening of the […]
Legislative Letter to Jill Underly on Wisconsin Literacy
Senator Eric Limburger and Legislator Robert Wittke: February 10, 2026 Dr. Jill Underly, State Superintendent Department of Public Instruction 201 West Washington Avenue Madison, Wisconsin 53703 Dear Dr. Underly: 2023 Wisconsin Act 20 created several requirements for the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) related to literacy. In DPI’s report on the 2024-25 universal reading assessment […]
Dyslexia & The Reading Wars
David Owen: To become literate, people have to repurpose parts of the brain that evolved to perform other tasks, such as object recognition and sound processing. “What we have to do, over the course of learning to read, is coördinate these areas to communicate with each other and build what we call a reading network,” […]
The peril of playing with viruses
Matt Ridley: If a military team made a mistake during a nuclear war preparedness exercise and accidentally obliterated millions of people, you would not expect to find some of the very same people merrily admitting a couple of years later that they have carried out the very same kind of exercise with different live nukes […]
Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class.
Dana Goldstein: “We do one book after state testing, and we did ‘The Great Gatsby.’ … A lot of kids had not read a novel in class before.” — Laura Henry, 10th-grade English teacher near Houston “My son in 9th grade listened to the audio of ‘A Raisin in the Sun.’ For ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ […]
How Yale Escaped the Crackdown on Higher Education
Douglas Belkin: President Trump has made an example of Ivy League universities, attacking, cajoling and fining them in brisk succession. There’s a notable exception: Yale University. In New Haven, Conn., the school’s conspicuous absence from the crosshairs has become a subject of intense campus speculation—among professors, students and even parents. “This is the $64,000 question,” […]
Google admits to YouTube Censorship
The FIRE: Google should not have waited to acknowledge it was pressured by the Biden administration to block content on its platforms. Google condemns jawboning now, but it failed to stand up for the rights of its users when it mattered. FIRE will continue to call on private institutions to stand up for their rights […]
How large would Gen X, Millennials, and Generation Z have been without abortion?
Cremieux: How many of the people who would’ve been in your generational cohort aren’t here because they were aborted? Between the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationdecision in 2022, women had access to abortion because of the Supreme Court’s decision to establish a woman’s constitutional right to it based on […]
“one fifth-grade project involved learning how to buy and run an Airbnb”
Run Ma: But because families have very different views on what a “good” afternoon program looks like, Alpha is now launching a series of microschools. The academic portion stays the same, but the afternoon programming varies depending on the focus. There’s one centered on sports, another on esports and gaming. But the one that stood […]
The All-City Spelling Bee champion attributes his success to reading
Anna Hansen: O’Keefe Middle School’s Benjamin Tekin, 12, started his day in Edgewood College’s Anderson Auditorium as one of 38 competitors at the All-City Spelling Bee, sponsored since 1949 by the Wisconsin State Journal, with help from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. (Three of the initial 41 entrants didn’t make it to the bee.) After almost […]
“The research found that reading failure is most likely a cause, not just a correlate, for the frustration that can and does result in delinquent behavior”
M S Brunner; An inordinately high percentage of juvenile wards are unable to decipher accurately and fluently and write legibly and grammatically what they can talk about and aurally comprehend; a high percentage of wards are diagnosed learning-disabled, with no evidence to indicate any neurological abnormalities. Handicapped readers are not receiving the type of instruction […]
Childless Cities
Emma Jacobs: —— Choose life!
“Only if they request it”
Liz Collin: At the meeting, she pointed to a section of the document which states that parents will be provided with “information about whether [their] child is transgender” only if they request it. “So how would a parent know to request such information if they aren’t aware that their child is struggling with gender dysphoria? How would […]
“Flipping a coin would actually be better” for identifying struggling readers
Christopher Peak: The first thing Havah Kelley noticed was her son’s trouble with the alphabet. The San Francisco mom reviewed letters with him for hours at a time, reciting their names and tracing their shapes. But Kelley’s son couldn’t write most of them on his own. He reversed them or scrawled incoherent shapes. Halfway through […]
Why Jimmy Can’t Read in Chicago
Erin Geary: The letter of the day is B: Bureaucracy, benefits, and billions The school reading wars have raged since the 1800s and consists of two camps: Those who believe that children learn to read through phonics and those that believe that children read using a whole language approach. A third recent addition to the […]
Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom
F. R. (Ruud) Van der Weel Audrey L. H. Van der Meer As traditional handwriting is progressively being replaced by digital devices, it is essential to investigate the implications for the human brain. Brain electrical activity was recorded in 36 university students as they were handwriting visually presented words using a digital pen and typewriting […]
Science replaced by ‘ideology,’ says longtime teacher leaving Minnesota
Luz Collin: A longtime educator said his faith and morals left with him little choice but to leave Minnesota at the end of this school year. He’ll start a new teaching job in North Dakota this fall. Carl Williams, a teacher of 22 years who has spent the last 11 in the Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa district, joined Liz […]
“Americans have had enough of the bigotry and intolerance of DEI”
Norm Coleman and Matthew Brooks As Americans and as Jews, we are grateful to the Republican elected officials across this country who are standing firm against the neo-Marxist DEI policies that have increased racial strife, shut down free expression on college campuses, and endangered American Jews. In all the states where people are fighting back […]
Math & Progress
My mom cried during the SpaceX launch. She’s a math teacher. “So many people in the education world want to get rid of advanced math for equity. I’m sick of it. Without math, this [launch] can’t happen. Kids need to be allowed to dream.” Spot on, mom 🇺🇸pic.twitter.com/LsGvs9WM5O — Max Meyer (@mualphaxi) November 18, 2023 […]
K-12 Governance
Alpha News: Union-backed Minnetonka school board candidate Sally Browne on DEI in schools: “Bake it into the cake in every way that we can.”
England and the Phonics Debate
Nick Gibb: The modern debate about how to teach children to read was triggered in 1955 by the publication in America of Why Jonny Can’t Read. Rudolph Flesch’s book told the story of a 12-year-old who was failing at school because his reading was so poor. Flesch attributed Jonny’s struggle to the fact he had been […]
In Defense of Professor Scott Gerber
Peter Wood: elissa Baumann, President of Ohio Northern University, after she and Law School Dean Charles Rose initiated an investigation of Professor Scott Gerber. The university has so far refused to explain to the Professor what deed caused his banning and forced removal from campus. This is a clear abuse of process and of the Professor’s […]
Learning to read notes
The reading ape: ‘Once you learn to read you will be forever free,’ is the quotation by Frederick Douglass (2017, p1) that adorns numerous primary school libraries across England and who would disagree? With 25% of young offenders having reading skills below that of the average seven-year-old and 60% of the prison population having literacy […]
“Essentially, that meant kids were not being taught to read at all”
Ronald Kessler: Essentially, that meant kids were not being taught to read at all. Whole language proponents even said that when children guessed wrong, they should not be corrected. “It is unpleasant to be corrected,” Paul Jennings, an Australian whole language enthusiast, said. “It has to be fun, fun, fun.” But reading, like devising algebraic […]
Notes on politics and the achievement gap
Daniel Lennington and Will Flanders Last week, Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly put out a press releasebroadly outlining her plans to address Wisconsin’s racial achievement gap. While it is perhaps a positive to finally see the superintendent addressing the failings of Wisconsin’s public schools, this release offers a disturbing window into the way […]
Watching the Education Apocalypse in Slow Motion
C Bradley Thompson: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU NOW SINCE DAY #1 OF DUMB & DUMBER. Banning CRT is NOT the solution. You’re going to get it no matter what, which is why you must #JustWalkAway. “Getting critical race theory out of public schools is harder than passing a law.” Banning the […]
Censorship: White House and Google/YouTube
Alana Goodman: Shareholders in Google and YouTube are pressing the tech giants to disclose any requests they have received from the Biden administration to scrub politically “problematic” information from the platforms, according to a copy of a shareholder proposal obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog group that […]
Race and finance: the student loan trap
Taylor Nicole Rogers and Gary Silverman: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month […]
Judge in Google case disturbed that ‘incognito’ users are tracked
Joel Rosenblatt: When Google users browse in “Incognito” mode, just how hidden is their activity? The Alphabet Inc. unit says activating the stealth mode in Chrome, or “private browsing” in other browsers, means the company won’t “remember your activity.” But a judge with a history of taking Silicon Valley giants to task about their data […]
Google pledges changes to research oversight after internal revolt
Jeffrey Dastin, Paresh Dave: Reuters reported in December that Google had introduced a “sensitive topics” review for studies involving dozens of issues, such as China or bias in its services. Internal reviewers had demanded that at least three papers on AI be modified to refrain from casting Google technology in a negative light, Reuters reported. […]
Inside the Google-Facebook Ad Deal at the Heart of a Price-Fixing Lawsuit
Ryan Tracy and Jeff Horwitz: State attorneys general said in a lawsuit earlier this month that a 2018 business agreement between two digital advertising giants, Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, was an illegal price-fixing deal. Lawmakers are calling for further investigation. The companies say it was above board. The Wall Street Journal viewed part […]
Covid-19 and Madison’s K-12 World
Hi, I’m cap tines K-12 education reporter Scott Gerard. Today. Our cap times IDFs panel will discuss how will COVID-19 change K-12 education. I’m lucky to have three wonderful panelists with me to help answer that question. Marilee McKenzie is a teacher at Middleton’s Clark street community school, where she has worked since the school was in its planning stages.
She’s in her [00:03:00] 11th year of teaching. Dr. Gloria Ladson billings is a nationally recognized education expert who was a U w Madison faculty member for more than 26 years, including as a professor in the departments of curriculum and instruction, educational policy studies and educational leadership and policy analysis.
She is also the current president of the national Academy of education. Finally dr. Carlton Jenkins is the new superintendent of the Madison metropolitan school district. He started the districts top job in August, coming from the Robbinsdale school district in Minnesota, where he worked for the past five years, Jenkins began his career in the Madison area.
Having worked in Beloit and at Memorial high school in early 1990s before moving to various districts around the country. Thank you all so much for being here. Mary Lee, I’m going to start with you. You’ve been working with students directly throughout this pandemic. How has it gone? Both in the spring when changes were very sudden, and then this fall with a summer to reflect and [00:04:00] plan, it’s been interesting for sure.
Um, overall, I would say the it’s been hard. There has been nothing about this have been like, ah, It’s really, it makes my life easy. It’s been really challenging. And at the same time, the amount of growth and learning that we’ve been able to do as staff has been incredible. And I think about how teachers have moved from face-to-face to online to then planning for.
To Head Off Regulators, Google Makes Certain Words Taboo
Adrianne Jeffries: As Google faces at least four major antitrust investigations on two continents, internal documents obtained by The Markup show its parent company, Alphabet, has been preparing for this moment for years, telling employees across the massive enterprise that certain language is off limits in all written communications, no matter how casual. The taboo […]
The Misunderstanding that Sparked the Reading Wars
Breaking the Code: I just finished reading Anthony Pedriana’s Leaving Johnny Behind, an enormously important and under-appreciated book that I discovered by chance, thanks to a post on Facebook. (Social media certainly does serve a purpose other than being a black hole of procrastination from time to time!) The author is a retired teacher and principal […]
Civics: To Head Off Regulators, Google Makes Certain Words Taboo
Adrianne Jeffries: As Google faces at least four major antitrust investigations on two continents, internal documents obtained by The Markup show its parent company, Alphabet, has been preparing for this moment for years, telling employees across the massive enterprise that certain language is off limits in all written communications, no matter how casual. The taboo […]
Google faces $5 billion lawsuit for tracking people in incognito mode
Carrie Mihalcik: Google faces a proposed class action lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of invading people’s privacy and tracking internet use even when browsers are set to “private” mode. The suit, filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Google violates wiretapping and privacy laws by continuing to “intercept, track, […]
Google faces $5 billion lawsuit in U.S. for tracking ‘private’ internet use
Jonathan Stempel: The lawsuit seeks at least $5 billion, accusing the Alphabet Inc unit of surreptitiously collecting information about what people view online and where they browse, despite their using what Google calls Incognito mode. According to the complaint filed in the federal court in San Jose, California, Google gathers data through Google Analytics, Google […]
Sidewalk Labs (Google) document reveals company’s early vision for data collection, tax powers, criminal justice
Tom Cardozo & Josh O’Kane: A confidential Sidewalk Labs document from 2016 lays out the founding vision of the Google-affiliated development company, which included having the power to levy its own property taxes, track and predict people’s movements and control some public services. The document, which The Globe and Mail has seen, also describes how […]
Should Facebook, Google be liable for user posts? asks U.S. Attorney General Barr
Nandita Bose, Raphael Satter: “No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts. They have become titans,” Barr said at a public meeting held by the Justice Department to examine the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. “Given this changing technological landscape, valid questions have been raised about whether Section 230’s broad immunity […]
Credentialism vs. Merit
Victor Davis Hanson: What explains the bankruptcy of the elite? We have confused credentials with merit—as we learned when Hollywood stars and rich people tried to bribe and buy their mostly lackadaisical children into named schools, eager for the cattle brand BAs and without a care whether their offspring would be well educated. Graduating from […]
He said the district was failing black students by allowing mostly-black classrooms to be disrupted, and by not holding misbehaving black students accountable for their actions.
Willis Krumholz: A Minnesota teacher received a $525,000 settlement, after suing the St. Paul School District for retaliating against him after he criticized its use of racial quotas in school discipline. Aaron Benner, a black man, filed the suit in 2017. He said the St. Paul School District forced him to quit after investigating him […]
Meeting the Challenges of Early Literacy Phonics Instruction
International Literacy Association: Learning to read can, at times, seem almost magical. A child sits in front of a book and transforms those squig- gles and lines into sounds, puts those sounds together to make words, and puts those words together to make meaning. But it’s not magical. English is an alphabetic language. We have […]
Google and surveillance capitalism
Brian Barth: “History offers sobering lessons about societies that practise mass surveillance.” But the privacy overreaches and the betrayal of consumer trust are, for Balsillie, sideshows to the real scandal: that Silicon Valley’s main business model is founded on the exhaustive monitoring of human behaviour—a revenue stream it is loath to give up. The five […]
Google now pays more money in EU fines than it pays in taxes
Graeme Burton: And the company also took the time to separate out “European Commission fines” in its consolidated statements of income in the company’s accounts. These increased from $2.7 billion in 2017 to $5.1 billion in 2018, with a further €50 million already set to be added to the bill for its first quarter and […]
More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO’s Vision
Ellen Huet and Mark Bergen: Alphabet Inc.’s Google became the most-profitable internet company by recruiting talented technologists and inspiring them enough to keep them around. That advantage may be slipping as some workers increasingly doubt the leadership and vision of Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai, according to recent results from an employee survey. The annual […]
Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
Mark Bergen and Jennifer Surane: For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for. […]
Commentary on Edina’s curriculum and climate
powerline: Katherine Kersten is a Senior Fellow at Center of the American Experiment, the think tank that I run. In the Fall 2017 issue of our magazine, Thinking Minnesota, she wrote a long, thoroughly documented expose of leftist political indoctrination and bullying of nonconforming students, teachers and staff in the Edina, Minnesota public school system. […]
A fraternity was told it was ‘appropriating culture.’ Administrators won’t say which.
Catherine Rampell: Don’t blame college students for their hostility to free expression. The fault ultimately lies with cowardly school administrations, who so often cave to student demands for censorship. Or as some now prefer to call it, “empowering a culture of controversy prevention.” Those are the actual, Orwellian words of an official at American University. […]
Further thoughts on Cost Disease
Matthew Skala: The lovely and talented Scott Alexander has a posting on Cost Disease: the costs of some things, notably education and medical care especially in the USA, have increased in the last few generations to a really unfathomable extent. He gives detailed statistics, but it’s typically about a factor of 10 after accounting for […]
Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not to
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Cost Disease
FT alphaville: 88% of US price increases since 1990 occurred in four highly regulated sectors, including education. Madison’s nearly $18k per student K-12 spending.
“Universities are too costly, too elitist and aren’t catering properly to the needs of technology companies”
Marie Mawad: “Studies in the United States are very expensive, blocking the way for many individuals to receive an education, find a well-paid job, and live the American dream,” according to a statement from 42 Tuesday. U.S. tech companies have long complained that there aren’t enough qualified American workers to fill the industry’s job gaps. […]
Exams Around The World
Terrance Ross: Examinations, tests, assessments—whatever the nomenclature, it’s hard to imagine schooling without them. Testing is the most popular method of quantifying individuals’ knowledge, often with the intention of objectively measuring aptitude and ability. Test-taking is a dreaded experience that the country’s kids and young adults share with their counterparts across the globe. The ritual […]
“Parental Cooperativeness”
Brendan Foley & Jane Miller: In December the district blamed a projected $2 million shortfall for FY2016 on ‘skyrocketing’ out of district costs, and said that it could not implement a proposed free full-day kindergarten program as a result. That action generated distrust and backlash by the special education community, and this most recent release […]
College Board Erases the Founding Fathers. Protect the Spirit of ’76.
Patrick Jakeway The classic novel Brave New World describes a future in which people have lost all of their liberty and in which they have become drugged robots obedient to a central authority. It also details how this control was first established. First, the rulers had to erase all history and all the people’s memory […]
Math & History
[I asked her about some of her experiences with math and history. Will Fitzhugh] Jessica Li (Class of 2015) High School Junior, Summit, New Jersey 24 May 2014 [6,592-word Sophomore paper on Kang Youwei… Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize 2014] My interest and involvement in mathematics was inspired by my family and my own exploration. My […]
The Calculus Trap
You love math and want to learn more. But you’re in ninth grade and you’ve already taken nearly all the math classes your school offers. They were all pretty easy for you and you’re ready for a greater challenge. What now? You’ll probably go to the local community college or university and take the next class in the core college curriculum. Chances are, you’ve just stepped in the calculus trap.
For an avid student with great skill in mathematics, rushing through the standard curriculum is not the best answer. That student who breezed unchallenged through algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, will breeze through calculus, too. This is not to say that high school students should not learn calculus – they should. But more importantly, the gifted, interested student should be exposed to mathematics outside the core curriculum, because the standard curriculum is not designed for the top students. This is even, if not especially, true for the core calculus curriculum found at most high schools, community colleges, and universities.
Developing a broader understanding of mathematics and problem solving forms a foundation upon which knowledge of advanced mathematical and scientific concepts can be built. Curricular classes do not prepare students for the leap from the usual ‘one step and done’ problems to multi-step, multi-discipline problems they will face later on. That transition is smoothed by exposing students to complex problems in simpler areas of study, such as basic number theory or geometry, rather than giving them their first taste of complicated arguments when they’re learning a more advanced subject like group theory or the calculus of complex variables. The primary difference is that the curricular education is designed to give students many tools to apply to straightforward specific problems. Rather than learning more and more tools, avid students are better off learning how to take tools they have and apply them to complex problems. Then later, when they learn the more advanced tools of curricular education, applying them to even more complicated problems will come more easily.
Fractions…
Learn about fractions, here.
New Wolfram Problem Generator
We are proud to announce Wolfram Problem Generator, a website where students decide which topic they want to practice and we provide the questions and solutions. This is an exciting new way to help students with their classes: previously, students provided their own practice questions and Wolfram|Alpha helped them find answers with Step-by-step solutions. Students can now ask Wolfram|Alpha for help with practice and homework questions and can do practice problems with Wolfram Problem Generator.
Currently, there are six main topics that Wolfram Problem Generator covers: arithmetic, number theory, algebra, calculus, linear algebra, and statistics. The topics range from early elementary school all the way through college calculus. Moreover, for elementary and secondary education material, we are closely following the Common Core Standards initiative to provide a comprehensive list of topics.
Why Teachers Should Play Minecraft–In Class
Dig, dig, dig. Break and build. Such are the simple, hallmark mechanics behind one of the world’s most popular indie games, Minecraft, which has sold an estimated 20 million copies across different platforms and consoles since its alpha release in 2009.
That includes copies at more than 1,400 schools across six continents, shared Joel Levin, the “Minecraft Teacher” who many accredit for bringing the game into the classroom. Levin, who teaches computer science at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York City, is the co-creator of MinecraftEDU, the official version of the game specifically tailored for teachers and students. His popular blog serves as a nexus of the Minecraft educator community.
“I see myself more as a gardener,” Levin humbly stated in an interview at the recent 2013 Games for Change Festival.”
And the garden that he’s nurtured has blossomed into a collection of colorful worlds, projects and contraptions of every imaginable scope and scale. Perhaps the grandest is the World of Humanities, made up of ancient cities and landmarks filled with additional readings, missions and quests for students. Its creator, Eric Walker, a teacher at the American School in Kuwait, has poured 600–and counting–hours into the project.
