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)