Winter break

This blog is going on winter break a bit early. It will return very soon after January 1, 2013.

Absences linked to assessment performance

Missing even a few days of school seems to make a difference in whether 8th graders perform at the top of their game, according to a new analysis of results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The report, the first of a planned series of analyses of NAEP's background-survey data, looks at how 4th and 8th graders use existing school time, including their attendance, instructional time, and homework. It was previewed here at a Nov. 29 meeting of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP. The study found that instructional time in reading, math, music, and the visual arts is on the rise nationwide, and that teachers are expecting more homework from their middle school students. As schools ramp up their academic focus, however, the analysis shows the cost of missing school may be greater. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

Lots to explore at Edutopia

Edutopia's Educational Topics and Special Reports

Get information and educational resources on topics such as arts education, financial literacy, green education, and multiple intelligences. 

Edutopia is full of resources; to explore those resources, click the above hyperlinked text. 

Considering technology in education

I was raised back in the day when teachers showed 16mm films in the classroom. It was a special event: the A/V librarian would wheel in an aqua-colored Bell & Howell projector, one of us nerdy types would wind the film through the various rollers, the screen would come down, the lights would go off and the magic would begin. Even the most boring film was still surrounded by this specialness, which set it apart from business-as-usual in the classroom.
Digital technology doesn't enjoy this same elevated, ritualized status in school. If anything, most schools integrate digital technology as transparently as possible, hoping to blend it effortlessly into classroom activity. I think that's a mistake. ( Douglas Rushkoff at Edutopia)

Good news for US education

The United States has gained ground against countries that are top performers in 4th grade reading, outscoring all but four in a widely watched international assessment, according to results released Tuesday.
Scores on the 2011 PIRLS, or Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, show that since 2006, the last time the exam was given, American 4th graders increased their average score by 16 points, from 540 to 556 on a 0-to-1,000-point scale, far above the PIRLS average of 500. Of the 57 participating countries and education systems, only students in Finland—taking part in PIRLS for the first time—and in Hong Kong, Russia, and Singapore scored higher than those in the United States. (Catherine Gewertz at Education Week)

New NAEP and vocabulary skills

A new analysis of federal data that provide a deeper and more systematic look into students’ ability to understand the meaning of words in context than was previously available from “the nation’s report card” finds stark achievement gaps in vocabulary across racial and ethnic groups, as well as income levels.
The analysis aims to offer greater insights into reading comprehension. The first-of-its-kind National Assessment of Educational Progress report suggests a consistent relationship between performance on vocabulary questions and the ability of students to comprehend a text, which experts say is consistent with prior research on the subject. (Erik W. Robelen at Education Week)

Jay McTigh on the Common Core State Standards

The key to avoiding an overly discrete and fragmented curriculum is to design backward from complex performances that require content. A return to the linguistic roots of “curriculum” reveals the wisdom in this outcome-focused view. The Latin meaning of the term is a “course to be run.” This original connotation helpfully suggests that we should think of a curriculum as the pathway toward a destination. As mentioned above, our conception is that curriculum should be framed and developed in terms of worthy outputs; i.e., desired performances by the learner, not simply as a listing of content inputs. (Jay McTighe at Edutopia)

Ed. Secretary Duncan's plans

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who says he plans to serve in the Obama Cabinet for the "long haul," has begun sketching out his priorities for the next four years. They include using competitive levers to improve teacher and principal quality and holding the line on initiatives he started during the president's first term.
The secretary is also making clear what he won't do: devote a lot of energy to a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act if Congress doesn't get serious about rewriting the current version, the No Child Left Behind Act. (Michele McNeil at Education Week)

US Department of Education

About ED: Overview and Mission Statement

ED's mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.
ED was created in 1980 by combining offices from several federal agencies. ED's 4,400 employees and $68 billion budget are dedicated to:

• Establishing policies on federal financial aid for education, and distributing as well as monitoring those funds.
• Collecting data on America's schools and disseminating research.
• Focusing national attention on key educational issues.
• Prohibiting discrimination and ensuring equal access to education. (from the United States Department of Education "about" page)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text. 

There are a lot of dangerous stereotypes out there. "Asian students are always better at math." "Boys are always better at sports." And perhaps the most dangerous of all: "The current generation are all digital natives." (Mary Beth Hertz at Edutopia)

In the piece from which the above is excerpted, Hertz challenges the idea that students "digital natives." Do you agree or disagree with her claim?

Common Core assessment developments

A group that is developing tests for half the states in the nation has dramatically reduced the length of its assessment in a bid to balance the desire for a more meaningful and useful exam with concerns about the amount of time spent on testing.
The decision by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium reflects months of conversation among its 25 state members and technical experts and carries heavy freight for millions of students, who will be taking it in two years. The group is one of two state consortia crafting tests for the Common Core State Standards with $360 million in federal Race to the Top money. (Catherine Gewertz at Education Week)

A 'Best of the Web' guide

Best of the Web Nov. 2012 from Richard Byrne

The above comes from Richard Byrne, the force behind Free Technology for Teachers.

Reading research and the Common Core

The truism that students "learn to read, then read to learn," has spawned a slew of early-reading interventions and laws. But the Common Core State Standards offer a very different view of literacy, in which fluency and comprehension skills evolve together throughout every grade and subject in a student's academic life, from the first time a toddler gums a board book to the moment a medical student reads data from a brain scan.
In doing so, the common-core literacy standards reflect the research world's changing evidence on expectations of student competence in an increasingly interconnected and digitized world. But critics say the standards also neglect emerging evidence on cognitive and reading strategies that could guide teachers on how to help students develop those literacy skills. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

Teaching critical thinking

Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono is a bona fide genius. The author, inventor, Rhodes scholar and Nobel prize-nominated economist graduated from college at age 15. In the field of education and business, he is famous for originating the term lateral thinking. In his spare time, he also wrote Six Thinking Hats and several other books on creativity. Of all his contributions to the field of education, there is one critical thinking method that I use in classes more than any other: the PMI, a brainstorming model built on the categories of plus, minus and interesting. (Todd Finley at Edutopia)

Open Culture's educational resources

Open Culture's collection of K-12 resources is sure to continue to grow. The collection is arranged according to content area which should make it easy to find something that is new and applicable to your classroom. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

What could better assessment mean?

The use of testing in school accountability systems may hamstring the development of tests that can actually transform teaching and learning, experts from a national assessment commission warn.
Members of the Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education, speaking at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Education here Nov. 1-3, said that technological innovations may soon allow much more in-depth data collection on students, but that current testing policy calls for the same test to fill too many different and often contradictory roles. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

The impact of emotion on learning

Numerous research reports show that social and emotional learning (SEL) can have a positive impact on students' academic performance. Edutopia's SEL research review explores those reports and helps make sense of the results. In this series of four articles, learn how researchers define social and emotional learning, review some of the possible learning outcomes, get our recommendations of evidence-based programs, find tips for avoiding pitfalls when implementing SEL programs, and dig in to a comprehensive annotated bibliography with links to all the studies and reports cited in these pages.(Vanessa Vega at Edutopia)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text.

The brain of a genius

Einstein's brain had extraordinary folding patterns in several regions, which may help explain his genius, newly uncovered photographs suggest.

The photographs, published Nov. 16 in the journal Brain, reveal that the brilliant physicist had extra folding in his brain's gray matter, the site of conscious thinking. In particular, the frontal lobes, regions tied to abstract thought and planning, had unusually elaborate folding, analysis suggests. (Tia Ghose at Yahoo News)

Duncan outlines second term

In his first major postelection remarks, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that he will use his second term to continue to leverage education improvement at the state and local levels, with a new emphasis on principal preparation and evaluation. And, he made clear that if Congress isn't serious about reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which the No Child Left Behind Act is the current version, then his department won't devote a lot of energy to it. (Michele McNeil at Education Week)

Study shows the impact of adversity on students

The stress of a spelling bee or a challenging science project can enhance a student's focus and promote learning. But the stress of a dysfunctional or unstable home life can poison a child's cognitive ability for a lifetime, according to new research.
While educators and psychologists have said for decades that the effects of poverty interfere with students' academic achievement, new evidence from cognitive and neuroscience is showing exactly how adversity in childhood damages students' long-term learning and health. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

Collected online resources at Alltop

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. You may wonder how Alltop is different from a search engine. A search engine is good to answer a question like, “How many people live in China?” However, it has a much harder time answering the question, “What’s happening in China?” That’s the kind of question that we answer. (from the Alltop "About" page)

What does this have to do with education? You can view an education page at Alltop; in other words Alltop has aggregated a number of online educational resources into a single page. To find that page, click the "e" among the letters on the main page, find "education" and then click.

If we're going to flip

We're hearing a lot of talk about education in these back-to-school days, but a few conversations rise above the din. One such is the chatter about "flipped classrooms,"¹ in which students listen to lectures at home and do homework at school. We also hear names like TED, Codecademy, Khan Academy and Knowmia bandied about, not to mention the term "MOOC"² and such brands as Udacity, Coursera, MITx, edX . . . What's it all about?

No doubt about it, online learning at every level for every purpose is the flavor of the moment, and everyone is scrambling to offer a feast. Investors are salivating at the prospect of getting into an education market with an estimated global value of $54 billion; social and academic entrepreneurs want to provide free education opportunities for the poor; and at the same time, media organizations are falling all over themselves trying to come up with the right model to replace the textbook and other print materials. (Idit Harel Caperton at Edutopia)

NCLB and graduation rates

A growing chorus of education policy advocates is urging the U.S. Department of Education to strengthen graduation-rate accountability in states that have earned waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act.
In separate letters last month to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a group of 36 civil rights, business, and education policy groups, along with U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., say they are concerned that many states' approved flexibility plans violate the spirit—if not the letter—of 2008 regulations that require all states to calculate the graduation rate in the same way and make those rates an important factor in high school accountability. (Michele McNeil at Education Week)

How to follow 'Free Technology for Teachers'

How to Subscribe to Free Technology for Teachers.
If you aren't subscribed you can join more than 51,000 others who do subscribe via these links.Subscribe via RSS. Subscribe via Email.Like Free Technology for Teachers on  Facebook.Find me on Twitter, on Google+, or on Pinterest.
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If you want to learn how to follow all that's Free Technology for Teachers, click the above hyperlinked text.  (Do keep in mind that Free Technology for Teachers does include advertisements.)

Edutopia profiles 'Schools That Work'

Edutopia's Schools That Work series profiles K-12 schools, districts, and programs that are dramatically improving the way students learn. Focusing on evidenced-based successes, we create how-to videos and actionable tip lists to help you transform your schools. We get close to the teachers, students, principals, and other administrators who have changed the future of their schools, and show you how they did it. (from Edutopia)

How the election could have an impact on education

Education policy and funding—from common standards and college access to the prospect of "doomsday" budget cuts—have been a steady theme in this year's presidential campaign, even as more specific K-12 debates lighted the political landscape in various states.
And with the strategic balance in Congress in play, along with the makeup of 44 state legislatures and the fate of numerous education-related ballot measures, the Nov. 6 elections could have a lasting impact on the direction of precollegiate policy. (Andrew Ujifusa and Alyson Klein at Education Week)

Practice prompts at the NYT

Last year we took some baby steps in thinking about how the new Common Core State Standards will affect the work we do on this blog.
Two things were obvious: The standards emphasize the reading of “informational text,” and we work for a newspaper that produces a daily geyser of it. (Katherine Schulten at The New York Times)

Halloween learning

It's late October, and kids' minds are turning to costuming and candy, marauding and merriment -- yes, this is Halloween time! While parents get mired in guilt over fair-trade candy and childhood obesity issues and some schools ban Halloween celebrations altogether, many teachers take advantage of the excitement in the crisp autumn air and brew up some activities related to All Hallow's Eve. (Amy Erin Borovoy at Edutopia)

To learn more and to watch some Halloween-related video that could be used for learning, click the above hyperlinked text.

A primer on copyright and Creative Commons

Copyright and Creative Commons Explained by Common Craft can be very useful in helping students understand why they cannot simply copy and paste whatever images they like that they find online. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

What can and cannot be used and how....Creative Commons licenses describe just how material an individual creates can be used by others. And there's some interesting and important information on this topic at Free Technology for Teachers.

Getting students engaged

If you're looking for ways to increase student engagement, you can find resources at Edutopia. These resources include a number of blog posts in which teachers describe ways they've gotten students in their classrooms more engaged. To learn more, click the hyperlinked text below.

Student Engagement

Get advice from educators on how to build a positive climate for learning, improve student curiosity, and enhance classroom collaboration.

How to participate in TED-Ed

Get Involved

The most meaningful TED-Ed videos are collaborations between the TED-Ed team and at least one of the following: a curious learner, an exceptional educator, or a talented visualization artist. If you are one of these types of people, or if you know someone who is, please help guide our effort to create a library of lessons worth sharing by acting on one of the options below.

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text. 

Science searching

Symbolab is a new search engine designed for mathematicians and scientists. The search engine is a semantic search engine which means that rather than just searching the text of your query Symabolab attempts to interpret and search for the meaning of your query. What this means is that when you type in an equation you will get results as links and get results as graphs when appropriate. Think of it Symbolab as a cross between Google and Wolfram Alpha. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

A reminder about Edutopia

Edutopia is dedicated to transforming the learning process by helping educators implement the strategies below. These strategies -- and the educators who implement them -- are empowering students to think critically, access and analyze information, creatively problem solve, work collaboratively, and communicate with clarity and impact. Discover the resources, research, experts, and fellow Edutopia members who are changing our schools. Join us in reinventing the learning process! (from Edutopia)

Click the above hyperlinked text to learn more

Why teachers should write with their students

Particularly, the “workshop” classrooms are “writers’ workshops” geared toward increasing awareness of and exposure to the power of writing for students. One of the core ideas at play in these workshops is the idea of the teacher as a writer, as a model for students in a professional context. When they write, she writes. What they write, she attempts too.

When I consider the effect this has on students, it is nothing short of transformative. When students understand the purpose for something outside of an assignment, they tend to remember it better. When they see an adult attempting what they ask others to do, they are motivated to join in. Teachers of writing (and teachers who use writing, for that matter) have an obligation to consider themselves as writers and act as such in the classroom. ( Steve J More at Edutopia)

Open education resources and the Common Core

In Utah, the state department of education is pulling together textbooks aligned to Common Core State Standards made up entirely of open educational resources, or OERs. South Dakota officials have created a repository of open education materials aligned to the common core for teachers. And at the national level, the education organization Achieve has launched a set of rubrics designed to help educators evaluate both the quality of OERs and their alignment to the common standards. (Katie Ash at Education Week)

One student on writing instruction

As a high school student myself, I was intrigued by Peg Tyre's article about a Staten Island school's turnaround. Tyre shows the importance of writing skills to academic and professional success. She looks specifically at the new and improved curriculum at New Dorp High School, which emphasizes analysis over self-expression. 
On a basic level, the idea works just fine. To perform well on tests and slap together personal statements, students need to be able to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs. The grammar and paragraph structure learned in English class are also handy in most jobs when schooling ends and students are tossed headfirst into the "real world." An astrophysicist must be able to describe her data, and a business executive needs to be able to write clear memos. But should schools solely focus on the mechanical facets of writing? (Haley Lee at The Atlantic)

Addressing student boredom

One glance, and any teacher knows the score: That student, halfway down the row, staring blankly at his tapping pen, fidgeting, sneaking glances at the wall clock roughly every 30 seconds, is practically screaming, "I'm bored!"

While boredom is a perennial student complaint, emerging research shows it is more than students' not feeling entertained, but rather a "flavor of stress" that can interfere with their ability to learn and even their health. An international group of researchers argues this month in Perspectives on Psychological Science that the experience of boredom directly connects to a student's inability to focus attention. (Sara. D. Sparks at Education Week)

Resources for teaching English language learners

Our ELL Best Practices collection includes a variety of resources that will help you ensure your school environment is welcoming to English language learners (ELLs) and their families.

ELL Best Practices Guide This ELL Best Practices guide helps you create acomprehensive communication plan that puts LEP parents on equal footing withEnglish-speaking parents and shows you how to steer clear of discriminationduring student registration. (from Teaching Tolerance)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Mark up webpages with Markup

Express thoughts quickly and easily on any webpage. Share ideas with coworkers and friends. Since Markup works in your browser, so there’s nothing to download and install. Just drag the Get Markup icon into your bookmarks bar. When you want to make notes on a webpage, click your bookmarklet to load the Markup toolbar. Publish when you’re ready to share your thoughts. (from the Markup website)

To learn more and to get the Markup bookmark tool, click the above hyperlinked text.

Code matters

The computer world is based on using APIs. Zynga uses the Facebook APIs to embed its games on FaceBook. Any iPhone or iPad app uses the iOS API to let you move stuff by swiping the screen. WordPress is built on a series of APIs that lets just about anybody build a web site in minutes.
However, even the best of these APIs are hard to use because the documentation, supposedly written in English, is terrible. Most engineers can't write a single coherent sentence, never mind string together a paragraph. (Bernard Meisler at The Atlantic)

Student feedback in the classroom

One place to begin is the way in which our secondary schools include students in both classroom and school-based decision-making processes. It continues to astonish and distress me that instructional, curricula and policy decision-making usually excludes the direct voices of students, their experiences, perceptions and preferences. (Mark Phillips at Edutopia)

Exit exams and the Common Core

With many states crafting assessments based on the common-core standards—and an increasing emphasis on college and career readiness—some are rethinking the kind of tests high school students must pass to graduate, or whether to use such exit exams at all.
Twenty-five states, enrolling a total of 34.1 million students, make exit exams a graduation requirement, according to a study released last month by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based think tank. That represents 69 percent of the nation's K-12 enrollment. And that's grown over the past decade: In 2003, 19 states representing 52 percent of U.S. enrollment had such exit exams. (Andrew Usifuja at Education Week)

Using pictures to teach ELL students

The Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) is one of our favorites. In it, students first brainstorm twenty words related to a picture, then put those words into categories and add new ones that fit those categories. Next they complete a "cloze" (or fill-in-the-blank) activity with sentences about the picture which they then put into categories of their own. They convert those sentence categories into paragraphs, and, finally, arrange the paragraphs into essays. Lastly, a title is chosen. (Larry Ferlazzo at Edutopia)

Formal testing of prekindergartners

Teachers at Orlando Day Nursery in Florida have always evaluated how well their 4-year-old prekindergartners—most of them poor and African-American—could recognize letters, isolate sounds in words, understand stories read to them, and show other hallmarks of early literacy.
Just as important, though, have been the teachers' formal observations of social and emotional development: Could children follow instructions, for example, and make friends and cooperate in a group? (Lesli A. Maxwell at Education Week)

Writing about things

"What is a concrete noun?" a student might ask.
"It's something you can drop on your foot," I always answer. "It's that simple."
"So if I am writing about markets, productivity and wealth, I am going to...."
"Yes indeed -- you are going to write about things you can drop on your foot, and people, too. Green peppers, ears of corn, windshield wipers, or a grimy mechanic changing your car's oil. No matter how abstract your topic, how intangible, your first step is to find things you can drop on your foot."
From a teacher's perspective, the lovely thing about this technique of writing with things you can drop on your foot is that both the skilled and the unskilled can do it. Both kinds of students find the assignment intriguing. Students led into writing this way at the start of a course--writing about abstract ideas in terms of concrete objects--find it strange at first, but they are pleased that the task is actually doable. They start to write with good examples, though they don't think of them as examples, but as objects.(John Maguire at The Atlantic)

The 'Tech-Powered Teacher'

Best known for our collection of education videos, Khan Academy covers every subject from algebra to art history for grades K-12. A significant piece of Khan Academy, however, is the interactive exercises that allow students to practice math and get feedback at their own pace, while giving teachers data on student progress. Over the past few years, our team has had the privilege of working directly with some of the teachers who use Khan Academy with their students. As we talk with teachers and observe them in their classrooms, one theme becomes absolutely clear: More than anything, teachers want all of their students to reach their potential. Teachers have high expectations for their students, and they work hard to help them succeed. But teachers are in a tough position. (Salman Khan at Education Week)

Supreme Court to hear affirmative action case

The future of affirmative action in education—not just for colleges but potentially for K-12 schools as well—may be on the line when the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a race-conscious admissions plan from the University of Texas next month.
That seems apparent to the scores of education groups that have lined up behind the university with friend-of-the-court briefs calling on the justices to uphold the plan and continue to recognize the need for racial diversity in the nation’s schools and classrooms. (Mark Walsh at Education Week)

The discussion continues at 'The Atlantic'

The New Common Core standards, a set of reforms that will soon be adopted by most states, talk about nonfiction reading, but that category seems to include more memos, short speeches, brochures, and technical articles than anything like a complete history book. The standards also mention something about nonfiction writing, but all of the examples in the appendix seem to be only more two-page efforts that will far from challenge the capability of our students in academic writing. (William Fitzhugh at the Atlantic)

Rural states seek NCLB waiver

The seven states that have applied for the latest round of waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act represent a large swath of rural America, ensuring that the U.S. Department of Education's experiment in awarding flexibility in exchange for certain education-improvement promises will play out in a diverse set of states with vastly different geographies and student populations.
At least half the schools in Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and West Virginia are considered rural by the National Center for Education Statistics. Alabama also has a high number of rural students, while Hawaii's single, state-run school district educates some students who live in remote island areas. (Michele McNeil at Education Week)

'The Atlantic' tackles writing instruction

In "The Writing Revolution," Peg Tyre traces the problems at one troubled New York high school to a simple fact: The students couldn't write coherent sentences. In 2009 New Dorp High made a radical change. Instead of trying to engage students through memoir exercises and creative assignments, the school required them to write expository essays and diagram sentences. Within two years, the school's pass rates for the English Regents test and the global-history exam were soaring. The school's drop-out rate — 40 percent in 2006 — has fallen to 20 percent.
The experiment suggests that the trend toward teaching creative writing was hurting American students. In a debate about Tyre's story, we asked a range of experts, from policymakers to Freedom Writers founder Erin Gruwell, to share their thoughts on Tyre's story. (from The Atlantic)

Poetry ambassadors announced

An arts partnership that boasts the blessing of the White House has chosen five talented high school students as its inaugural class of student literary ambassadors.
The new National Student Poets program, announced last November, spotlights promising young poets, harnessing their talent and energy to inspire and encourage their peers.(Catherine Gewertz at Education Week)

Got sticky notes?

This week, I watched a science teacher use sticky notes in a very creative way. To check for understanding, the teacher gave each student a sticky note and asked each of her science students to give concrete examples of the vocabulary that they had learned in class. As the students exited the classroom, they placed the sticky note on the door. After the students all left the classroom, the teacher collected the sticky notes and was able to tell right away which students understood the concepts and which ones needed some targeted assistance. (Ben Johnson at Edutopia)

Partnerships could replace single studies

Long-term partnerships, rather than one-off studies, may become the new norm for researchers looking for access and districts looking for answers.A forthcoming study commissioned by the William T. Grant Foundation, of New York City, finds more districts are developing long-term, structured relationships with researchers. It says the trend is driven by tight local budgets and an increased federal focus on making education research usable. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

A reminder about TED-Ed

What makes schools improve?

What makes one low-performing school turn around and build momentum over time, while another, seemingly similar school tries the same strategies but continues to struggle?
It's not just particular programs or practices, but the interplay of school implementation with district policies and support, according to the Institute of Education Sciences' Turning Around Low-Performing Schools project—the most comprehensive federal research on such schools to date. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

Library of Congress's poetry resources

This site is a comprehensive guide to locating poetry resources available on the Library of Congress's Web site. Major areas of the Library's Web site that include poetry resources are listed at the right. Select a link to view a description of and links to poetry resources available through each area. (from the Library of Congress)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

NAEP shows some students still lack writing skills

After decades of paper-and-pencil tests, the new results from the “nation’s report card” in writing come from a computer-based assessment for the first time, but only about one-quarter of the 8th and 12th graders performed at the proficient level or higher. And the proficiency rates were far lower for black and Hispanic students.
With the new National Assessment of Educational Progress in writing, students not only responded to questions and composed their essays on laptop computers, but also were evaluated on how frequently they used word-processing review tools like “spell check” and editing tools such as copying and cutting text. Some prompts also featured multimedia components. (Nora Fleming at Education Week)

Common Core instructional materials

Nearly all states are developing curricular and supplemental materials to help districts and schools implement the common-core state standards, but far fewer are approving or certifying lists of materials, according to a new report from a Washington-based research and advocacy group. And just four states—Delaware, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Nebraska—said they are requiring that districts use materials aligned to the common standards in English/language arts and mathematics. (Erik Robelen at Education Week)

Teacher resources at PBS

PBS Teachers is PBS' national web destination for high-quality preK-12 educational resources. Here you'll find classroom materials suitable for a wide range of subjects and grade levels. We provide thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations. These resources are correlated to state and national educational standards and are tied to PBS' award-winning on-air and online programming like NOVA, Nature, Cyberchase, Between the Lions and more. (from the about page at PBS Teachers)

ND to apply for NCLB waiver

North Dakota has applied for a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
 State Superintendent of Public Instruction Wayne Sanstead approved the waiver application in time for the Sept. 6 deadline, saying it is “clearly the right thing to do.”
“The waiver’s merits exceed any shortcomings ... I think this puts us in a forward, positive movement,” Sanstead said Monday. (Mara Van Ells at the Bismarck Tribune)

Yes...from the old standby: Free Technology for Teachers

Earlier this week I recommended Pixlr to someone who needed a quick way to resize and change the colors of an image. Pixlr offers a large set of image creation and editing tools. One of the tools that can be quite handy is Pixlr Grabber. Pixlr Grabber is Pixlr's screen capture tool. Pixlr Grabber is available as an extension for Chrome or Firefox. Using Pixlr Grabber you can capture your screen, crop the screen image, and print what you like. You can also send the image to Pixlr Editor for further editing options. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Common Core and the classroom

One of the groups designing tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards has launched a major effort to help state teams of educators understand—and be able to translate for their peers—what the new assessments will entail for classroom instruction. (Stephen Sawchuk at Education Week)

Have a great summer

Today marks the first day of the week for the last week of school. And this blog is going on hiatus until school resumes in August.

Video competition announced

Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Institute have launched the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition. The competition will award cash prizes for the best short videos that explain the use and promise of free, high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER) and describe the benefits and opportunities these materials create for teachers, students and schools. (from the Creative Commons website)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

High school rankings questioned

The National Center for Education Statistics plans to check data on about 5,000 high schools after faulty information from the federal agency led to erroneous rankings for three high schools on U.S. News & World Report’s yearly “Best High Schools” report.
As a part of its rankings, U.S. News uses the Common Core of Data, a rich repository of information on every public school, district, and state education agency in the country. This year’s report was based on data collected in the 2009-10 school year. (Christina A. Samuels at Education Week)

NCLB waivers and grading

In the future, a principal in Idaho could celebrate if his school got a score of 99 from the state. But move the school to Arizona, and that score could push a principal to look for a new job.
As more states move to assign letter grades, stars, and other ratings to schools through their federal No Child Left Behind Act waiver applications, the diversity of the plans shows that getting an A or an F would mean different things in different states. (Andrew Ujifusa at Education Week)

History resources galore

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education (contract number ED-07-CO-0088), Teachinghistory.org is designed to help K–12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U.S. history education in the classroom.
Teachinghistory.org, funded through the Office of Innovation and Improvement’s Teaching American History (TAH) program, builds on and disseminates the valuable lessons learned by more than 1,000 TAH projects designed to raise student achievement by improving teachers’ knowledge and understanding of traditional U.S. history. (from the "about" page at Teachinghistory.org)

New science standards released

An ambitious effort to refocus K-12 science education across the nation enters a new phase today with the release of the first public draft of voluntary, “next generation” science standards.
Organizers say the standards emphasize not simply providing a foundation of essential knowledge, but also ensuring that students apply that learning through scientific inquiry and the engineering-design process to deepen their understanding. (Erik W. Robelen at Education Week)

Note: today here refers to May 11, 2012.

Want to learn? Check out Common Craft

Our videos may surprise you. They're short and simple. They use paper cut-outs and a whiteboard. But lurking under the simple surface are lessons that have been crafted with great care. Despite our fun and lighthearted style, we take explanation and education seriously.  (from the Common Craft "about" page)

Common Craft videos typically explains things related to Internet applications. To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

CCSS and math work

Universities, community colleges, and K-12 districts in 30 states announced plans this week to work together on redesigning secondary mathematics teacher preparation to align to the Common Core State Standards.
The project is being coordinated by a science- and math-focused initiative of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, a group that supports states' major public research universities.
Called the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership, the project has already won a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Overall, there are 38 partnerships involving some 68 universities, nine community colleges, and 87 school systems involved. (Stephen Sawchuk at Education Week)

View the shoreline through the years

NOAA recently released a collection of more than 7,000 historical U.S. shoreline topographic images for viewing in Google Earth. The NOAA Historical Shoreline Survey Viewer has thousands of layers that you use to see what the U.S. shoreline looked like going back as far as 1841. The layers can be viewed alone or your can overlay them on top of current imagery. You can launch the KMZ file for this imagery by clicking here or you can read about how to navigate this imagery on the NOAA page. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Note: NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Study suggests CCSS will improve math scores

A new research paper offers what amounts to a spirited defense of the Common Core State Standards in mathematics, making the case that the standards are, in fact, consistent with those in high-achieving countries and suggesting their faithful implementation holds considerable promise to improve student learning.
The paper bases that optimism about the new standards' potential on a look at the achievement of states whose prior math standards most closely aligned to the common core.
"The simple translation is that those states with standards that are closest to the Common Core ... did better," based on national test data from 2009, said William Schmidt, an education professor at Michigan State University who coauthored the study.
That said, Schmidt emphasized (repeatedly) that this particular finding is merely suggestive, and does not establish causation. (Erik Robelen at Education Week)

Audio and video podcasts available

New Pages is a hub for all things literary. And one of those things is a compilation of audio and video podcasts.  To explore, click the hyperlinked text below.

Podcasts [P], videos [V], and audio programs [A] from literary magazines, book publishers, alternative magazines, universities and bloggers. Includes poetry readings, lectures, author interviews, academic forums and news casts.

Comparing cloud computing

Now that Google Drive is finally a reality, how does it stack up against the cloud competition?
Google’s new cloud-based document and storage solution is priced aggressively and boasts best-in-class integration with other Google services — including Google Docs. As you can see from our hands-on, Google Drive is an impressive product.
Still, the cloud storage and collaboration space is more competitive than ever before. Google faces competition not just from cloud companies such as Box and Dropbox, but from Apple, Microsoft and Amazon as well. (Christina Warren at Mashable)

Like to debate?

Your Logical Fallacy Is provides short explanations and examples of twenty-four common logical fallacies. Visitors to the site can click through the gallery to read the examples. Your Logical Fallacy Is also provides free PDF poster files that you can download and print. I dropped one of these posters into Zoom.it for easy embedding into this blog post. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Athletes who write

What do Wimbledon Champion Serena Williams, Red Sox great Curt Schilling, US ski racer David Chamberlain, and some athletes from the NCAA, sports academies, and secondary schools have in common? Answer: They all write to improve as athletes. (from WritingAthletes.com)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

National Geographic resource

The cover story on the May issue of National Geographic is about the sketches of artists during the US Civil War and how those sketches helped to tell the story of the war. You can view a gallery of sketches here. One of the online features supporting May's issue is a timeline spanning 1526 to today. The timeline is focused on the Civil War and the years following. Along the timeline there are images and short stories of significant moments in the history of civil rights in the United States. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

The Bard animated

Shakespeare Animated is a YouTube channel containing twelve playlists ten of which are animated adaptations of Shakespeare's most famous plays. Some of the animated plays that appear in the Shakespeare Animated playlist are Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, MacBeth, and The Taming of the Shrew. I've embedded part one of Romeo and Juliet below. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

A reminder: TED-Ed...take a look

Consider this a gentle reminder about this new venture from TED.

Questions to consider before' flipping' your classroom

It seems like you can't open an education periodical these days without finding an article espousing the wonders of flipping the classroom. Like most initiatives in schools, flipping the classroom does have merit in the right situation. But also like most initiatives it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. Here are three questions that I have to ask before flipping a classroom. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Common Core Standards and implementation

In less than three years, the Common Core State Standards have vaulted over three key hurdles, surprising more than a few naysayers. In June 2009, governors and education chiefs in 46 states pledged their support for the idea. A year later, panels of experts unveiled the completed standards. By last November, all but four states had formally adopted them. (Catherine Gewertz at Education Week)

Click the above hyperlinked text to read more.

You can participate tonight

What is World Book Night?

World Book Night is an annual celebration designed to spread a love of reading and books. To be held in the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Ireland on April 23, 2012. It will see tens of thousands of people go out into their communities to spread the joy and love of reading by giving out free World Book Night paperbacks.

Want to check out EdChat?

As more and more people join the world of Twitter (460,000 signups per day), school parents and teachers are more commonplace on this global social media tool. According to a recent Pew Internet Study, 84% of all Twitter users are between the ages of 18-49. Why is this important to school officials? The age range includes the majority of our school parents.
As an educator, there are tons of great hashtags available to find the resources I’m looking for. Hashtags are usually found at the end of a 140 character tweet. I think of them like television channels, only there are many more to choose from and you can even create your own for your organization or team. Today, the most widely used educational hashtag on Twitter is called #edchat. On Tuesdays at 12pm (Eastern) and 7pm (Eastern), you can join hundreds of educators around the world discussing a topic chosen by a public poll during the days leading up to the chat. For more information on #edchat check out a recent piece by educational technology guru Steven Anderson (@web20classroom). (Joe Mazza at Edutopia)

History resource from Free Technology for Teachers

History Engine is an educational project developed by The University of Richmond for the purpose of giving students a place to explore stories of American life and publish their own stories based upon their research. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Pinball and mindmaps

Pinball is a suite of fun tools from the BBC for organizing ideas and generating new ideas. In Pinball you will find tools for creating mindmaps, outlines, and simple slideshows. Pinball also has tools to help you brainstorm and generate new ideas. Each one of the six Pinball tools provides options for including text and images in your mindmaps, outlines, and slideshows. If you're struggling to think of new ideas, each Pinball tool has a "lucky dip" button that will serve up a random image or bit of text to prompt you. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Race to the Top spending slow

Almost two years into the federal Race to the Top program, states are spending their shares of the $4 billion prize at a snail's pace—a reflection of the challenges the 12 winners face as they try to get ambitious education improvement plans off the ground.
Through the end of March, the 11 states and the District of Columbia had spent just 14 percent of their Race to the Top money, with New York, Rhode Island, and Hawaii spending the least as the midpoint of the four-year grants approaches, an Education Week analysis of federal spending reports shows. (Michele McNeil at Education Week)

Explania explained (a bit, that is)

Explania is a platform of Instruxion, a multimedia company specialized in the creation of high-impact explanatory content. For more information about our company, visit the Instruxion website at www.instruxion.com.
All animations of Explania – not just the animated videos but also the interactive animations – can be embedded into other websites.  This way, an animation can be used by anyone interested in the subject, and as such spread across many other websites. (from the Explania website)

New resource goes live

The team of English-language learner experts assembled by Stanford University education professor Kenji Hakuta to create resources for teaching the common-core standards to ELLs launched its Understanding Language website today.The Understanding Language initiative has multiple aims: to help teachers and administrators fully appreciate the central role of language in the more-rigorous new standards that have been adopted by all but four states and to provide resources to educators to make sure that they are equipped to deliver the type of instruction that ELLs will need to fully access the more-demanding content. (Lesli A. Maxwell at Education Week)

Google opportunity

Titled Education on Air this live Google+ Hangout will happen on May 2nd. Education on Air is a day of hangouts hosted by teachers for teachers. Throughout the day there will be presentations centered around the following themes; Hot Topics in Educational Technology, Communication, Google Apps, Harnessing the Power of the Web, Instruction and Assessment, and Productivity. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Technology and the future of classrooms

Teleporting, flying cars and Back To The Future style hover-boards. These have all been promised to us within the next few years, but there is little hope of seeing them any time soon. These far-fetched technologies fill us with excitement about what the future may hold, inspiring generations of dreamers to learn math, science and engineering.
But what about the technologies that will help these aspiring inventors, scientists and engineers learn? What does the future hold for our classrooms, and what kinds of technologies will shape the minds of our children's children? (Nick Granthan at Edutopia)

New literacy standards and their demands

Zach Morales learned early that high school would go more smoothly if he kept certain things to himself.
But privately, the unassuming teen is proud of his passion for reading. So he hesitates for only a moment before opening the door to his small bedroom.
“I have a vast collection of books,” says Morales, sweeping an arm towards shelves packed with horror novels, Harry Potter books, and biographies of professional wrestlers.
“Every book in this bookcase, I’ve actually read,” he proclaims. (Benjamin Herold at Education Week)

A TED Talk example

1100+ talks to stir your curiosity. Browse by subject, length, or rating (inspiring, jaw-dropping, funny…)

The above is the description you'll find when you visit the TED Talks website.  But, perhaps, an actual TED Talk does a better job of conveying the essence of TED .

Math skills predict learning

In "School Readiness and Later Achievement," a widely cited 2007 study of large longitudinal data sets, University of California, Irvine, education professor Greg Duncan and his colleagues found that in a comparison of math, literacy, and social-emotional skills at kindergarten entry, "early math concepts, such as knowledge of numbers and ordinality, were the most powerful predictors of later learning." A large-scale Canadian study from 2010 echoes those findings: Math skills at school entry predicted math skills and even reading skills in 3rd and 2nd grade, respectively, better than reading skills at school entry. (Deborah Stipek, Alan Schoenfeld, and Deanna Gomby at Education Week)

'Bully' to hit theaters unrated

One way for The Weinstein Company to get around that pesky R-rating the Motion Picture Association of America ratings board slapped on "Bully"?

"Bully" will arrive in theaters on Friday with the unusual moniker of "unrated." That means the theater owners themselves will have the choice of screening the film or not. (Christopher Rosen at the Huff Post)

Below is part of the Wikipedia entry for the Motion Picture Association of America.


The Motion Picture Association of America's film-rating system is used in the U.S. and its territories to rate a film's thematic and content suitability for certain audiences. The MPAA rating scheme applies only to films submitted for rating. The MPAA rating system is a voluntary scheme not enforced by law; and films can be exhibited without a rating, though many theaters refuse to exhibit non-rated or X-rated films....

The MPAA's rating system is administered by the Classification & Ratings Administration, which is not a government agency. MPAA ratings serve primarily as a consumer suggestion by a group of corporate analysts. After screening films, their personal opinions are used to arrive at one of five ratings. Theater owners voluntarily agree to enforce corporate film ratings as determined by the MPAA, which in turn facilitates their access to new film releases.

Note: Bully will be released March 30, 2012 in Los Angeles and New York.

Instructional scaffolding defined

What is instructional scaffolding? Take a look at an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for "instructional scaffolding."

Instructional scaffolding is the provision of sufficient support to promote learning when concepts and skills are being first introduced to students. These supports may include the following:

• Resources
• A compelling task
• Templates and guides
• Guidance on the development of cognitive and social skills

These supports are gradually removed as students develop autonomous learning strategies, thus promoting their own cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning skills and knowledge. Teachers help the students master a task or a concept by providing support. The support can take many forms such as outlines, recommended documents, storyboards, or key questions.

Competency based education in one Colorado school district

Faced with stagnating student achievement, the 10,500-student Adams 50 district in Westminster, Colo., launched an improvement initiative in 2008 that eliminated old notions of grade-level progression.
Instead of placing students in a grade based on their age and marching them through year by year, the district started what it then called a standards-based system, with students working on academic material that matched their developmental levels. They move on only when they can demonstrate mastery of a particular academic skill. (Christina A. Samuels at Education Week)

Teacher summer opportunity

C-SPAN is announcing the dates for its 2012 Summer Educators’ Conference.  Each summer we host a day and a half long conference at C-SPAN’s headquarters in the heart of Washington, DC. Airfare to and from Washington, two nights’ hotel stay, and meals during the conference are all provided by C-SPAN. If you are a C-SPAN Classroom member, and have not attended one of our previous conferences, we invite you to apply for this professional development experience. This year’s conference will be held on July 12 – July 13. (from C-SPAN's Teacher Opportunities Website)


The above information comes by way of Free Technology for Teachers.

Popular movie and book and learning

Students might be extra tired this morning. Why?  They went to the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games, the motion picture adaptation of Suzanne Collins' hugely popular novel of the same name.

Here's a bit on how the popularity of the novel can be useful in school.

More than just a popular subway read. Teachers in Columbus, Ohio, are tapping into The Hunger Games to pique students’ interest in symbolism, politics, and more. (The Columbus Dispatch)

To read more, click on the hyperlinked text above, which will take you to The Quick and The Ed. And then, click on the word pique in the story.

Common core's increased demands for nonfiction texts

The common core's vision of informational text includes literary nonfiction, as well as historical documents, scientific journals and technical manuals, biographies and autobiographies, essays, speeches, and information displayed in charts, graphs, or maps, digitally or in print. Helping students tackle complex examples of such genres across the disciplines—from English to engineering—bolsters them for work and higher education by building foundational knowledge, vocabulary, and literacy strategies, common-core advocates contend.
Many states and districts are responding to the new emphasis on nonfiction with new materials and training.
New York City singled out informational text as this year's focus in its work to get ready for the common standards in English/language arts. (Catherine Gewertz at Education Week)

School improvement grants assessed

Two years into the implementation of the federal School Improvement Grant program, state officials are generally optimistic about its potential, but have a lot of ideas for perfecting it, according to a pair of reports released today by the Center on Education Policy, a research and advocacy organization in Washington.
A note on methodology: CEP already has done some of the best research available on the SIG program, which aims to help states turn around some of their lowest-performing schools. For this study, CEP surveyed 46 state Title I directors from November 2011 through January 2012. (Alyson Klein at Education Week)

Visualizing vocabulary

Graph Words is a neat little site that provides webs of related words. If you're like me and you tend to use the word "awesome" a lot and want to mix it up, type "awesome" into Graph Words to see a web of alternative word choices. Click on any word in the web to generate a new web of more related words. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click on the above hyperlinked text.

Innovation in education

As the private sector works faster and more boldly to churn out next-generation technology and embrace cutting-edge practices, the U.S. Department of Education and its partner federal agencies are ramping up their efforts to bring more spark and innovation into elementary and secondary schools.
Under President Barack Obama, the administration has updated education technology and broadband plans that seek to set a national vision, launched a competition to reward school districts and nonprofits for innovative ideas, and started a pilot project to allow federal money to pay for mobile devices to put digital learning within reach for more students (Michele McNeil at Education Week)

Teachers, students and Twitter

Recently, I have had students discover my @TheNerdyTeacher Twitter account and follow me. It usually only lasts a few days before they unfollow me -- a few days of my flooding their feed with blog posts, education news and Edutopia articles. The big question I get from kids is, "Why don't you follow me back?" I tell them that I have some guidelines when it comes to Twitter and following students. I thought it would be great if I shared them with all of you that use Twitter as part of your education life. (Nick Provenzano at Edutopia)

To read Provenzano's suggestions about using Twitter with students, click the above hyperlinked text.

Q and A with Khan Academy founder

Salman Khan, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Business School, was working as a hedge fund manager when he began posting videos on YouTube six years ago to tutor young family members in math. That led to the 2008 creation of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization that has built a free, online collection of thousands of digital lessons (nearly 3,000 of them created by Mr. Khan himself) and exercises in subjects ranging from algebra to microeconomics. Education Week Staff Writer Lesli A. Maxwell recently interviewed Mr. Kahn about the evolution of the academy and its potential for changing K-12 education. (Lesli A Maxwell at Education Week)

To read the interview, click the above hyperlinked text.

Common Core Resources

Last week, Education Week reported on the frustration teachers are facing as they begin designing lessons around Common Core priorities—teacher resources are either scarce, or hard to find. This week, ASCD convened Colorado educators to discuss Common Core implementation, and classroom teachers in Colorado echoed similar concerns over accessible teaching resources. (from ASCD)

TED-Ed launches

As usual, great resources

The Google Search Stories Video Creator allows you to create a short video about the searches that you perform on Google. To create your video you enter your search terms, select some background music, and let the creator render a video for you. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Free Technology for Teachers is a terrific go-to blog that is always full of interesting suggestions and information. To check it out, click here.

Less seat time

States have established an array of policies in recent years to free schools from having to award academic credits based on "seat time," with the goal of making it easier for struggling students to catch up, exceptional students to race ahead, and students facing geographic and scheduling barriers to take the courses they need.
Thirty-six states have adopted policies that allow districts or schools to provide credits based on students' proving proficiency in a subject, rather than the time they physically spend in a traditional classroom setting, according to the National Governors Association. One state, New Hampshire, has required high schools to assign credits based on competency, rather than seat time, while others have encouraged schools to do that or allowed them to apply for waivers from state policy to do so. (Sean Cavanagh at Education Week)

Common core adoption rubric and self-assessment

States and districts are embarking on the work of turning the common standards into curriculum and instruction. But as researchers have documented, (here, here, and here) many don't yet have fully formed, concrete plans for how to do that.
To help move that process along, two groups have created a framework to help states think about what a solid plan should look like. Issued yesterday, the rubric and self-assessment tool defines the ways states can be most effective in bringing common standards into classrooms, offers questions for them to consider when doing that, and looks at exemplary state work in two key implementation areas: curriculum materials and teacher professional development. (from Curriculum Matters at Education Week)

The winner is....

The purpose of Teaching with Contests is to assist educators in finding contests that can be used in the classroom to motivate students. We are here for the student and the teacher not the promotion of products or company public relations. Our goal is to select contests and programs whose primary goal is education and secondarily business/product promotion. (from the "about" page at Teaching with Contests)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Encouraging critical thinking

The ability to think critically is one skill separating innovators from followers. Critical thinking reduces the power of advertisers, the unscrupulous and the pretentious, and can neutralize the sway of an unsupported argument. This is a skill most students enjoy learning because they see immediately that it gives them more control. (G. Randy Kasten at Edutopia)

Hungry?

Food means “a substance we eat for nutritional and/or gustatory purposes,” but that word is bland. For a tastier experience, use one of its synonyms listed below to convey the connotation you desire your readers to digest: (from Daily Writing Tips)

To learn some new ways to refer to food, click the above hyperlinked text.

Web tools for group work

Any teacher who has assigned group projects to students has at some point had to help those students organize and equitably distribute work.... Here are some tools that you can have students use to manage their responsibilities when working on group projects. (from Free Technology for Teachers)


Click the above text to learn specifics about these tools.

More states apply for NCLB waivers

Twenty six more states, plus the District of Columbia, are applying for waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act, which would free them from many of the core tenets of the law in exchange for adopting key reforms backed by the Obama administration. Already, 11 states have won this new flexibility.

Those applying are: Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, along with D.C. (Michele McNeil at Education Week)