This afternoon, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, testified before the Texas Joint Interim Committee to Study the Public School Finance System on how digital learning and the effective use of technology can help drive better learning for all students in Texas, regardless of their geography or socioeconomic status. Gov. Wise emphasized the necessity of incorporating digital learning into the new funding formula the committee is studying.

As teachers and students prepare to go back to school, there is at least one important date they will be marking on their calendars: February 6, 2013. In just six short months, they will be joining millions of students and tens of thousands of teachers, as well as dozens of states and national organizations for the second annual Digital Learning Day (www.digitallearningday.org), an unprecedented campaign that celebrates teachers and shines a spotlight on successful instructional practice and effective use of technology in classrooms.

Yesterday afternoon, the National Research Council (NRC) issued Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century, a new report that validates the “deeper learning” approach in the nation’s classrooms and recommends that it be broadly adopted in schools across the country. In response, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, made the following statement.

By better integrating academic, career and technical education, and work-based learning, the nation’s secondary schools can increase student engagement, boost student achievement, and provide students with more options after they graduate from high school, according to a new policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education.

Preparing all students to succeed in today’s increasingly complex world requires a shift from a teacher-centric culture to learner-centered instruction that recognizes students’ individual learning needs, according to a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education.The report, Culture Shift: Teaching in a Learner-Centered Environment Powered by Digital Learning, examines the support that educators and schools will require to implement genuine teaching practices that are personalized for each student. Digital learning, the report argues, can be a major strategy for enabling teachers to meet varied students’ needs while also supporting necessary cultural shifts in teaching.

This morning, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, testified before the Michigan Senate Education Committee on how digital learning and the effective use of technology can help drive better learning for all students in Michigan—regardless of their geography or socioeconomic status.

The eleven state applications approved by the federal government for waivers under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act vary in the degree to which “deeper learning” skills are reflected in the standards, accountability systems, professional development, and teacher evaluations, according to a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education. The report, Providing Greater Opportunities for Deeper Learning in NCLB Waivers, argues that deeper learning provides students with the deep content knowledge they need to succeed after high school and the skills that today’s jobs demand.

Approximately 77 percent of students in the United States identified as homeless by the U.S. Department of Education are ineligible for homeless services from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) because of red tape, according to a new analysis by the Alliance for Excellent Education. Nationwide, approximately 715,238 homeless students are caught in this bureaucratic gap between the Department of Education and HUD, where the former classifies these young people as homeless, but the latter does not. As a result, too many homeless students do not have access to HUD services, including shelter, permanent housing, case management, substance abuse treatment, and more.

Yesterday afternoon, the Obama administration released its blueprint to transform career and technical education currently authorized under the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 2006. In response, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, made the following statement.

On Tax Day 2012, a new analysis from the Alliance for Excellent Education finds that graduating 90 percent of high school students would generate an additional $1.8 billion annually in tax revenues. Of that total, $1.1 billion would be federal tax revenue while the remainder—nearly $700 million—would be state and local revenue.