A Better Blend: Digital Instruction + Great Teaching
Blended learning holds unique promise to improve student outcomes dramatically. Schools will not realize this promise with technology improvements alone, though, or with technology and today’s typical teaching roles. In a new Public Impact policy brief, A Better Blend: A Vision for Boosting Student Outcomes with Digital Learning, which we co-authored with Joe Ableidinger and Jiye Grace Han, we explain how schools… Teachers Say “Yes!” to an Opportunity Culture
A year ago, Public Impact began working with school design teams of pilot schools in the Charlotte and Nashville public school districts to choose and tailor school models for extending the reach of excellent teachers to more students.
We didn’t know for certain how well the design processes would go. We chose these districts because they had leaders who showed real commitment to expanding the impact and authority of already-excellent teachers and a burning passion to…
Charlotte’s Project L.I.F.T. Flooded with Applications
Do teachers care about terrific career opportunities that let them stay in the classroom? Do teachers long for jobs that pay them more—substantially more—for leading their peers and reaching many more students with their excellent teaching? Do teachers want jobs that give them time during school hours to collaborate with and learn from their peers? Judging from the 708 applications now stacked at Project L.I.F.T., teachers are thundering, “Yes!”
Missing the Mark at the Arizona State Ed Tech Summit
As Stacey Childress and many others have pointed out, Andy Kessler’s closing remarks at this week’s big ed-tech conference at Arizona State University went way off track. By positioning technology as a way to replace teachers, Kessler missed the mark on two key points.
First, great teaching will matter more, not less, in the digital age. As we’ve written here and here, digital learning has the potential to…
Authorizers: See What Replacing Failing Charter Schools, Replicating Great Ones Can Do
How could cities see their charter school sectors take off in quality, matching or besting the performance of their district schools, and the state? Public Impact researchers working with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute on a new study found that replacing low-performing charter schools while replicating high-performing ones could dramatically improve quality within just a few years. (For Fordham’s take on this, see… Connecting Smart Cities
For several months now, Tom Vander Ark has been issuing rich installments in his Smart Cities series, building a detailed map of where innovations in learning are happening. Here, we profile an organization connecting Smart Cities–the Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust)–and its work helping city-based organizations support the emergence of high-quality blended learning.
Teachers: This is the Moment to Expand Your Impact
By Public Impact In this abridged version of the Commentary that appeared in Education Week, Celine Coggins of Teach Plus joins Public Impact’s Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel to discuss why schools and policymakers must expand the impact of excellent teachers, now. With new information demonstrating the great variation in teacher effectiveness and the availability of better teacher-evaluation systems, schools have increasingly accurate data to identify which teachers are exceptional. Plus, recent reports have shown that early-career…
How Digital Learning Can (and Must) Help Excellent Teachers Reach More Children
In this blog post for the Innosight Institute (now the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation), Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel argue that “schools – and nations – that excel in the digital age will be those that use digital tools both to make teaching more manageable for the average teacher, and to give massively more students access to excellent teachers.” While digital learning can help solid teachers become more effective, one of its greatest…
Ed-Tech Innovators: Get Results Now by Leveraging Great Teachers
We’re excited about the prospects, but we all know it will take time for digital learning to transform education. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of teachers will continue to be the single most important school factor in student learning.
That doesn’t mean innovation isn’t important. On the contrary, it’s vital for moving from today’s reality–in which only a fraction of students have excellent teachers–to what students need: consistent access to excellence. Here’s a prediction: Digital developers whose products…
Teacher Evaluation Outside the One-Teacher-One-Classroom Mode
As more schools use technology and new staffing models to reach more students with personalized learning and excellent teachers, how will evaluation systems keep up? It’s been a heavy lift for pioneering states and districts—examples here—just to begin measuring the basics in a one-teacher-one-classroom mode. What can schools do to select, develop, and evaluate teachers in new roles—such as those working in elementary specialist teams, <a href="http://opportunityculture.org/reach/time-tech-swaps-rotation-in-person/"…
Financially Sustainable Career Paths for Teachers
Follow the money. Usually good advice to find out what’s actually important—or not—to people or organizations, regardless of the values they profess. In education, what’s most striking is where the money doesn’t go: to a variety of engaging roles and opportunities for education professionals, and expanded impact and opportunity for those who demonstrate excellence. In everyday lingo, that’s called “career paths.”
Public Impact has published new career paths stemming from our…
Redesigning Schools for Financially Sustainable Excellence: Infographic!
Everybody loves a good infographic (even you wonky researchers – just wait ‘til nobody’s looking), and we hope this one will change how you view education reform efforts.