Before considering whether to leave teaching and take a role in the administration, teachers need to learn an important lesson about indemnification.
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education
When children were given a computer, they self-organized learning groups and reinforced the central tenet of education. We all need more memory and faster processors.
Public education in the United States resists change. That schools look much now as they did in the 1950s and the entrenched interests that resist change is old news. The story less often told and much more provocative is how gatekeeping to school heads hinders change.
Big new grants announced recently by the feds seek to remedy fears of over-testing students. The current political fight misses the big picture. There is plenty of reason for optimism in more testing.
Organizations can transform, whether it's a $17 or $25,000 change.
Education is loaded with insiders, and for outsiders, education is often a monolith. Insiders know education is highly fragmented. Addressing fundamental challenges in education is the central mission of any leader’s work. With that in mind, here are the top four pain points across the education space.
Education needs to be untethered from measuring success based on how long students spend in a chair. But the same logic applies to people working in schools. Top talent values being allowed to work at a time, place, path and pace of their choosing. Schools need to remember to untether its employees as well as its students.
Big data offers the biggest hope for schools since the invention of the abacus. Taking a moment to let the mind wander through the possibilities is a visioning exercise well worth the time.
The right size of a school the smallest size necessary to ensure it achieves its mission. To be at the right size, leaders need clear answers to two questions. First, what is the school's purpose? Second, how do we know if we're being productive? Until purpose and productivity are defined, schools will always be bloated or baby-sized.
The public and private education sectors need to talk more, and trust more.
It's time for the US to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Rethinking use of a common, vague word can help school leader decision-making.
The way to a guaranteed and viable curriculum is through principals. Principals must be instructional leaders with the power to run their schools independent of oversight from either district-level managers or school boards.
If culture eats strategy for breakfast, culture must not have many friends. Culture can be moved withstrategy carefully matched to culture.