Taking a Closer Look at Value Added
Last month I joined a team of UPD-ers and traveled around the state of Oklahoma training district-level trainers on Value-Added. During one of the sessions, a participant raised his hand and asked our team how…
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How to Run a Computer Based Training Session: Three Indispensible Techniques
This week I’m really delighted to introduce Frank Nichols a talented consultant from our strategic partners at Strategic Urban Solutions. Strategic Urban Solutions will be guest posting for us from time to time, and…
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Securing Our Schools in the Wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary Tragedy — Pt I
The shooting last week at Sandy Hook Elementary School has prompted a great deal of debate across the country about gun control and access to mental health services. The incident has also prompted increased scrutiny…
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Pure as the Driven Data
I like numbers. Numbers are facts. My weight scale reading for today: 165 lbs. Numbers are objective and free of emotion. My pedometer tells me that I ran for three miles today. However, as objective…
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Do States Lack the Capacity for Reform?
Michael Usdan and Arthur Sheekey just wrote a great commentary on the complex and evolving relationship between federal policy, the State Education Agency, and the human capacity to get it all done. In their essay,…
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Managing for Mastery
We have blogged about the topic of that last video post before, including a reference to Herzberg’s classic “One more time, what motivates employees?” And just like Herzberg, Daniel Pink points out that the three…
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Motivation Animation
Every once and a while that friend that sends you three forwards a day hits on something interesting. The other day, I received a link to a YouTube video from RSA that is a very…
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Value-Added Data and Special Education
At a gala for the American Association of People with Disabilities in March, Education Secretary Arne Duncan affirmed the current administration’s commitment to maintaining high expectations for special education populations, noting that “students with disabilities…
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Why Naysayers on Teacher Pay for Performance are Missing the Mark
It seems simple, right? Offer bonuses to teachers that bring big gains in student achievement, and you’ll get better performance out of your teachers. But, a pack of studies over this past year seems to…
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The Baltimore Consensus
In 2008, the Copenhagen Consensus Center asked a group of the world’s top economists to identify optimal social “investments” that could best help reduce malnutrition, broaden educational opportunity, slow global warming, cut air pollution, prevent…
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