Today is Ralph Tyler’s Birthday

In addition to Earth Day, today is Ralph Tyler’s birthday—an important day for Learning List because of Tyler’s influence on curriculum design.  Tyler was born on April 22, 1902, and is recognized as the principal developer of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). His thinking also influenced the policies that were formalized in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act …

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Funding Update: Financial Literacy Curricula

Discover Financial Services seeks to ensure that all students have the skills needed for a successful financial future. In support of this goal, Discover administers the Pathway to Financial Success (PFS) program which provides grants to U.S. public high schools that implement a financial literacy curriculum.  Per the PFS website, in order to be eligible for grants a high school: …

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A Curriculum for the Home: Addressing Language Gaps Early to Improve Academic Achievement

Research has increasingly shown that many children from low-income homes arrive at school with weaker language skills than their more affluent peers, and that early gaps in literacy are difficult to close and frequently predict lower academic outcomes as students progress through school. Recognition of the importance of early literacy has fueled the push for government funded pre-K programs for …

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The Common Core Raises the Bar for High Performing Schools

Last week, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation released a report detailing the practices of Uncommon Schools, the winner of the 2013 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools. Uncommon Schools is network of 38 charter schools that provides a college preparatory program to low-income and minority students in New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. According to the report, a defining …

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Publishers Are Aligning to the CCSS

Last week, EdWeek ran an article about a study by two professors evaluating whether commonly used K-12 textbooks are aligned to the CCSS.  Though the study has not yet been released, the article seems to suggest that the professors found none of the textbooks to be suitably aligned.  I applaud the authors of the study and the article for cautioning …

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WARNING – Poor Instructional Decisions Cause Failure

This is the time of the year when all hands are on deck to help struggling students achieve. We, as educators, have a tendency during the crunch time before state testing to work harder and faster but not always smarter. Due to this sense of urgency, teachers often give students stacks of worksheets designed in the same format as the …

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ING Unsung Heroes Programs Provides Funding for Innovative Teaching

The ING Unsung Heroes Program recognizes K-12 educators who are innovative in the classroom and positively influence students.  The program provides 100 educators statewide with grants of $2,000 grants each year to implement creative projects in schools or school systems. The top three finalists receive awards of $27,000, $12,000, and $7,000. All K-12 educators working full-time in an accredited public …

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Trust But Let Learning List Verify

A recent post on EdWeek’s Digital Education blog underscores the value of Learning List’s service verifying publisher-provided alignments to the Common Core State Standards. In the post, Benjamin Herold reports on current research indicating that many instructional materials that claim to be aligned to the CCSS are only “modestly” aligned.  His post cites research results indicating that many CCSS-aligned instructional …

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New Perspectives

Recently, I presented to a group of school board members and a superintendent. The superintendent made the following observation that I’ve been chewing on since our meeting. In his opinion, instructional materials increasingly are geared towards teachers, rather than students, and, specifically, towards making teachers’ jobs easier. Most people think that’s a good thing; he does not. Teacher editions typically …

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Ensuring Instructional Materials Are Aligned to the CCSS

Catherine Gewertz’s recent Edweek column, New Tools Gauge Fidelity of Lessons to Common Core, summarizes current efforts to ensure that instructional materials are aligned to the Common Core State Standards.  Not surprisingly, the column mentions Learning List as one new tool to help educators “size up” instructional materials and their alignment to the CCSS.    

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