PBS NewsHour: North Carolina School Engages Tech Generation With Digital Learning Tools

Last Friday PBS Newshour aired a segment on Mooresville school district in North Carolina and how it has turned almost completely digital. Mark Edwards, the Mooresville Schools Superintendent, explains, “There is a disconnect for a lot of kids when in their world, they are seeing a whole array of technology, and it might be with games, or it might be with music, or it might be with a variety of things in their home, and they go to school and it’s like going back in time.”

The school district has given every teacher as well as every student in fourth grade through high school a laptop as well as made several other investments in technology including ongoing teacher training and help desks in each school. So far, the results have included gains in content areas across the board, higher graduation rates, and dramatic drops in the number of student suspensions.

According to Superintendent Edwards the cost is about $200 per student a year but much of that money comes back and they have experienced savings in textbooks, print costs, and paper costs. When interviewer John Tulenko asked, “Do you buy textbooks anymore?” Superintendent Edwards responded, “I will quote our high school principal, ‘divorce proceedings are underway.’”

During the segment, teachers in Mooresville explain how they use technology to engage students and offer more creativity in assignments and the middle school principal discusses how they address the challenge of keeping students on task.

“For years we would tell students we are going to prepare you for your future but their experience in school didn’t have much to do,” said Superintendent Edwards. “I’d say that would be the same to telling a student, we are going to prepare you to drive a car so get on this horse and the kids say ‘but that doesn’t make sense, I’m not going to be riding a horse.’ And so a lot of kids in school said let’s get off that horse.”

Click on the video below, to watch the full segment:

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Accelerate Program Looking for New School Leaders

The Accelerate Program prepares outstanding educators to lead start-up charter schools that will succeed from the beginning – to help close the achievement gap. Accelerate started in Chicago and has since expanded to New York, Los Angeles and the San-Francisco –Oakland area. 

From now until early April, the Accelerate New School Leadership Program is seeking applicants and nominees to enroll in its two-year professional development program designed to create an elite corps of principals in new charter schools. The opportunity includes a paid summer leadership institute at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, residency in a high-performing charter school and eventually, the chance to lead your own new school.

If you are interested in learning more or applying, visit http://www.alainlocke.org/apply/apply. The application deadline is April 8, 2011.

Ask the Expert: Mariana Haynes

District policies play a considerable role in determining principals’ instructional behaviors and successes in transforming high school culture, according to a new brief released today from the Alliance for Excellent Education. "Meeting the Challenge: The Role of School Leaders in Turning Around the Lowest-Performing High Schools" recommends policies that focus on a schoolwide, systematic approach to improving professional learning and collaborative practices. Mariana Haynes wrote the brief and we recently interviewed her to learn more about the importance of school leadership. Do you have a question for Mariana? Simply, type it in the comments section below and she will do her best to respond. 

What do we know about the impact of school leaders on teaching and student achievement?

Of all school-related factors that impact student achievement, school leadership is second in importance only to classroom instruction. A major report from the Wallace Foundation looks at the way leadership influences student learning by creating the conditions and the expectations in high schools that there will be excellent instruction and a culture of ongoing learning for educators and students in the school. Leader effects are largely indirect and are strengthened by professional communities and the collective influence of all participants in adopting practices that enhance student learning.

Ask the Expert: Ace Parsi

Last week, U.S. Representative Judy Chu (D-CA) introduced the Linked Learning Pathways Affording College and Career Success Act, which would combine rigorous college preparation with workplace experience in an effort to improve student engagement, academic achievement, and success after high school. To learn more about the bill, click here. 

Ace Parsi, policy and advocacy assistant at the Alliance for Excellent Education, has been working on this issue and we recently interviewed him to learn more about the Linked Learning effort. Do you have a question about the initiative? Simply, type it in the comments section below and Ace will do his best to respond.

The term college and career ready is a popular one in today’s education policy world. How is Linked Learning unique in offering students a real world college and career ready experience?

One of the strongest elements of this approach is just its simple logic with regards to delivering a college and career ready education. College and career readiness is a term that’s thrown around far too frequently in policy circles, but Linked Learning makes it a reality.  This is primarily facilitated by the four elements of Linked Learning: academics tied to college standards, integrating academics with a career and technical education (CTE) theme, providing students with work based learning opportunities, and supplemental services that help bridge the gaps.  So if we are to say we want to prepare students for college, we have to first make sure they are getting the coursework and we are not compromising in academics.  Additionally, in order to be college and career ready, students have to be able to apply concepts they are learning to solve real problems. That’s where the integration of CTE and the provision of scaled work based learning experiences like internships, apprenticeship, and service-learning come in.  Then finally supplemental services help ensure all students regardless of where they fall with regards to being college and career ready and having the skills to succeed in this environment. 

Morning Announcements: September 8, 2010

In an op-ed in the Providence Journal, Massachusetts secretary of education Paul Reville writes, “By adopting the Common Core, we’ve set a clearer, higher target for educational success. Now it’s time to see that all our children reach it.”

The Governor of Michigan would like lawmakers to require the school year to last more than 180 days.

The Columbus Dispatch editorial board asks “How can overall better performance go along with fewer kids graduating?”

Stateline.org takes a look at how states are grappling with a provision in the fine print of the Education Jobs Fund bill.

The New York Times profiles a teacher-led schools around the country.

Inside Higher Ed looks at why rural community colleges have done significantly better than their urban and suburban counterparts in the percentage increase of associate degrees awarded to women and minorities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines.

The New York Times magazine asks, "When Does Holding Teachers Accountable Go Too Far?"

The Washington Post writes about how D.C. schools might be affected if Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee decides to move on.

More than half of Hawaii's public school teachers leave within five years of being hired, according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Morning Announcements: September 3, 2010

Washington Post columnist Jay Matthews discusses how students’ struggle to apply their AP or International Baccalaureate credits towards their college degrees.

At a new experimental school in Michigan, two teachers and an executive administrator will lead instead of a principal and assistant principal.

Michigan receives nearly $82.7 million in school improvement grants for twenty-eight of the lowest-performing schools in the state.

Read more about the federal aid money that is being awarded to two state coalitions for the development of new assessments in the New York Times, Miami Herald, and the Boston Globe.

Under a plan that the North Carolina Board of Education has been developing for months, most high school juniors will be required to take the ACT and the state will pay the students’ test registration fees.