Student Failure as a Learning Tool

Much is now being debated about the new Common Core assessment standards. In a recent School Librarian Journal article by Paige Jaeger (The Wrong Villain: Critics Should Focus on Race to the Top not on Common Core 1/20/2014) Jaeger pointed out that critics of the common core initiative should instead be focusing the Race to the Top $4.35 billion competitive grant program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education “to reform schools, with a focus on measuring student success and holding teachers and principals accountable as a strategy to...

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The Launch of i-pel’s Website

The Institute of Progressive Education and Learning is proud to announce the launch of its new education website. The purpose of this website is to support our ongoing efforts to give all of America’s K-12 students a useful education.  Over a year in development and containing over fifty K-12 education categories and almost 600 images www.i-pel.org is one of the more unique educational sites you will encounter. It was developed as both an information and in-depth research resource for school administrators, teachers, parents, students,...

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The Value of Common Core in Schools

Santa Rosa Press Democrat 2/6/2014 By: Michael Haran George F. Will’s article (The Common Core is Worth Opposing 1/17/2014) is amazing in its “conservative” mentality. He bashes the Common Core Standards as a continuation of “Fifty years of increasing Washington inputs into K-12 education that has coincided with disappointing cognitive outputs from schools.” Hello? This is exactly why the Standards were enacted.  Will’s reminds us that the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the 1970 General Education Provisions Act an d the 1979 law...

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Education needs to be retooled as well

By Michael Haran Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, Ca. Published: Friday, April 19, 2013 at 7:31 p.m. Last Modified: Friday, April 19, 2013 at 7:31 p.m. In reading Andy Brennan and Simone Harris’ Close to Home (“A teacher’s perspective on improved learning,” April 4) and Bill Gates’ column (“Here’s a fairer way to evaluate teachers,” April 5) on teacher evaluations, I found that neither opinion piece addressed the new curriculums that are now being developed by textbook and eBook publishers and the evolution of K-12 teaching...

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