The Mind Trust in Indianapolis released a plan over the weekend that proposes a bold and dramatic transformation of public education akin to what has taken place in New Orleans and New York City. The plan, an amalgamation of some of the nation’s most promising school reform strategies looks to transform Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) which have been chronically underperforming for several years. The plan hopes to diminish a 20 percentage point achievement gap between IPS students and the state in English and a dismal 58 percent graduation rate.
The Mind Trust report observes that great schools across the country share a set of core conditions that enable them to help all students achieve. Among these core conditions are the freedom to build and manage their own teams, refocus resources to meet actual student needs, hold schools accountable for their results(and close those that don’t perform), and create a system of school choice that empowers parents to find schools that they want their children to attend.
- Downsizing the Indianapolis Public Schools district office while allocating resources to school level leaders. Acc
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Apple is launching a new version of its iBooks software, tailored to present vivid, interactive textbooks for elementary and high school students on the iPads.
IBooks 2 will be able to display books with videos and other interactive features, the company announced Thursday at an event at an event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
It’s not clear how Apple plans to get it front of students, however, since textbooks are subject to lengthy approval processes by states. Also, few students have iPads, which start at $499.
Apple also revealed iBook Author, an application for Macs that lets people create electronic textbooks.
Major textbook publishers have been making electronic versions of their products for years. Until recently, there hasn’t been any hardware suitable to display the books, so e-textbooks have had little impact. PCs are too expensive and cumbersome to be good e-book machines for students. Dedicated e-book readers like the Kindle have small screens and can’t display color.
Tablet computers like the iPad, however, are both portable and capable of showing textbooks in vivid color.
Apple is also setting up a textbook section its iTunes store.
Among the launch titles will be two high school textbooks – Biology and Environmental Science – from Pearson PLC and five from McGraw-Hill.
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When KCET site editor, Zach Behrens, wanted to expand his site’s geographic coverage range, he personally asked UC Riverside creative writing professor, Susan Straight, to write a blog. Not only is Straight the author of eight novels and numerous other publications, she holds a widely recognized interest in the history and culture of the Inland Empire, where she was born and has spent most of her life.
The blog title “Notes of a Native Daughter,” inspired by Straight’s interest in the works of Joan Didion and James Baldwin, hits the heart of what Straight’s blog actually is. From sheep to murals to oranges, her work contains the thoughtful images of someone who cares very much about her home and seeks to record its essence. Her articles are inspired by events in her own life—random bits of information she picks up on and chooses to investigate, childhood memories, sporadic drives around the desert—but the pieces come together to form an image of the Inland Empire itself and the people who live here. One article, “Twilight Gardening and Kite Fighting”, is based primarily upon a haphazard conversation with a neighbor, while another, a favorite of Straight’s (Agua Mansa), is predicated upon an old story, brought to mind by the chance comment of a friend. The blog provides a
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President’s Notebook
The Flame magazine, Spring 2012
By Deborah A. Freund, president of Claremont Graduate University
It almost goes without saying that to be a university president, it’s not enough just to be respectful of other people’s religious beliefs, but to have expanding religious diversity—as well as ethnic, cultural, gender, and class diversity—at the core of your administrative principles. I certainly do; especially being president of a university like CGU, which resides in one of the most diverse regions on the planet. There is no question that diversity makes a university stronger, but as scholars we are morally and intellectually obligated to open our doors to everyone.
And the more we learn about our neighbors of all stripes, the more effective we will be at greeting them with open arms in a way that ensures they will want to greet us back. This is
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Great news emerged this week for elementary- and middle-school teachers who make gains in their students test scores. While the teachers themselves may not be pulling down big salaries, their efforts result in increased earnings for their students. In a study that tracked 2.5 million students for over 20 years, researchers found that good teachers have a long-lasting positive effect on their students’ lives, including those higher salaries, lower teen-pregnancy rates, and higher college matriculation rates.
I’m a practical person. I understand that we spend billions of dollars educating our children and that the taxpayer deserves some assurance that the money is not being squandered. Accountability matters. I get it. Still, as a teacher, it’s hard not to feel a little bit wistful, perhaps even wince a little, reading this study.
It’s important to remember that its authors, Raj Chetty, John N. Freidman, and Jonah E. Rockoff, are all economists. Their study measures tangible, economic outcomes from what they call high versus low “value-added” teachers. This “value-adde
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