Howard Nemerov Born on February 29, 1920 in New York, New York, Howard Nemerov displayed an early interest in the arts, as did his younger sister, the photographer Diane Arbus. He graduated from the Society for Ethical Culture’s Fieldstone School in 1937 and went on to study at Harvard, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1941. Throughout World War II, he served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian unit of the U. S. Army Air Force. He married in 1944, and after the war, having earned the rank of first lieutenant, returned to New York with his wife to complete his first book. Nemerov was first hired to teach literature to World War II veterans at Hamilton College in New York. Nemerov was also an accomplished prose writer. Nemerov was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and The Guggenheim Foundation, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and the National Medal of the Arts. Selected Bibliography Poetry Prose Multimedia
How To Make a Charpoy Innovative Secondary Education for Skills Enhancement (ISESE): Phase II Research The Innovative Secondary Education for Skills Enhancement (ISESE) project, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, identified the skills required for work in the 21st century economies of Africa and Africa, and to explore innovative models of delivering these skills to youth of secondary school age. The core of the project was a series of 12 background studies, now publically available at our website at Produced in partnership with regional partners, these explore a range of issues related to skills, education, and economic development in 12 focus countries across Africa and Asia. Our synthesis of these studies revealed that, while technical and basic cognitive skills are still important in the workplace, transferable and non-cognitive skills such as communication, problem-solving, punctuality, and flexibility are increasingly important. Publication & Resource Type: Publications
Time for a New Focus on What Works for Education Quality | Center for Education Innovations Nicholas Burnett, the Managing Director for Education at Results for Development Institute, leads the Center for Education Innovations. This post was originally published on the ODI blog as a part of its national progress in education series. We know how to expand enrollments, and politicians have been quick to do so in response to massively increased demand from parents. But we still don’t know enough about how to improve learning, relevance and equity in education. Yet these topics are at the heart of the likely post-2015 education targets as recorded in the Muscat agreement. Not only do we not know enough about them, we also don’t know enough about how to sequence educational reforms, adopt innovations and improve accountability. That’s what I take away from my review of ODI Development Progress’s four excellent case studies of country efforts to improve educational quality and expand post-primary education. Unless things improve, a political backlash is likely.
The New ‘Hire’ Education The New ‘Hire’ Education Alternative educational pathways are a response to the lack of clear connection between higher education and the workforce; a market shift to which liberal arts programs must respond. “In a personalized world where students have agency, we have to let go of our mental model of a linear, conveyor belt model. We need to think about adaptive systems. If you need a picture to hold in your mind, think highways with lots of on and off ramps.” ~ Chris Sturgis, “Does Competency Education Mean the Same Thing for K-12 and Higher Education?” The on- and off-ramps that connect higher education to the workforce are few and far between. This closed highway illuminates one of the core components of a disruptive innovation — something we call non-consumption. Who are the non-consumers of higher education? Students, graduates and working adults are witnesses to a new reality in today’s economy and are therefore looking for a different job to be done in our parlance.
sweden_school_choice_the_country_s_disastrous_experiment_with_milton_friedman.single Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images Every three years, Americans wring their hands over the state of our schools compared with those in other countries. The occasion is the triennial release of global scholastic achievement rankings based on exams administered by the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which tests students in 65 countries in math, science, and languages. The angst over U.S. student performance—and its implications for the American workforce of the near future—is inevitably accompanied by calls for education reform: greater accountability, more innovation. Advocates for choice-based solutions should take a look at what’s happened to schools in Sweden, where parents and educators would be thrilled to trade their country’s steep drop in PISA scores over the past 10 years for America’s middling but consistent results. But Swedish school reforms did incorporate the essential features of the voucher system advocated by Friedman.
What’s the job of teacher? The crying need for a genuine job description. A rarely discussed weakness in education is the lack of a true job description for teachers in hiring. Being told that “you will teach US History” or “we are hiring you to be a 4th grade teacher” is not a job description. It doesn’t say what you are responsible for causing. A real job description would be written around the key learning goals and Mission-related outcomes. The Danielson Framework for Teaching doesn’t really address this problem, despite its many strengths. Interestingly, job descriptions in other fields are typically far clearer about results sought. Notice how the italicized phrase in each item establishes a performance goal for the role: “to increase sales…for adherence to specifications…that meet buyer targets…to determine cost effectiveness…to stay informed…to evaluate each campaign.” Some years back I had an illuminating conversation with a high school principal about the problems in our hiring. 1. 2. 3. 4. “I have to cover the content” “No, you don’t get it!
Responding to Diane Ravitch on KIPP | Jonathan Schorr There’s not a whole lot that schools can do to improve the life trajectories of children growing up in poverty. That seems to be the contention underlying much of the writing of education historian Diane Ravitch, who ranks among the most influential education pundits nationally. Indeed, she took to the pages of the New York Times last year to assure us that “[u]sually,” dramatic improvements in schools “are the result of statistical legerdemain.” What muddies Ravitch’s argument, however, is a growing body of examples of schools that are demonstrably changing lives, preparing students for success in college in neighborhoods where college attendance and graduation are rare. While those examples are increasingly numerous, and stem from many different networks and types of schools, none has been more powerful than KIPP, whose 125 open-enrollment charter schools have become a national symbol of what’s possible in education in the nation’s toughest neighborhoods. Like this: Like Loading...
Educational Leadership:Authentic Learning:Five Standards of Authentic Instruction Fred M. Newmann and Gary G. Wehlage Why do many innovations fail to improve the quality of instruction or student achievement? In 1990, we began to explore this question by studying schools that have tried to restructure. To define authentic achievement more precisely, we rely on three criteria that are consistent with major proposals in the restructuring movement:1 (1) students construct meaning and produce knowledge, (2) students use disciplined inquiry to construct meaning, and (3) students aim their work toward production of discourse, products, and performances that have value or meaning beyond success in school.2 The Need for Standards for Instruction While there has been much recent attention to standards for curriculum and for assessment,3 public and professional discussion of standards for instruction tends to focus on procedural and technical aspects, with little attention to more fundamental standards of quality. Figure 1. Higher-Order Thinking Depth of Knowledge References
10 Ways Schools Can Prepare Students to Fail Well Remember those little toys shaped like an egg called weebles? “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.” This is a pretty good life lesson if you think about it. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. The Compendium Blog of The A.T.TIPSCAST | Christopher R. Bugaj