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Former President of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, Kiki Corry shares insights on how to improve science programs by incorporating exciting phenomena

I can remember my college graduation like it was two months ago. Which, quite frankly, it was. I stood alongside my peers, anxiously anticipating walking across the commencement stage. The many families and friends in the audience cheered as my name was called, and the President of the College theatrically shook my hand in congratulations. A photographer took my picture as I proudly held my diploma. “It’s over!” I thought, “It’s finally over!”

edCircuit Opinion
The Scientific American article For Children With Autism, Multiple Languages May Be A Boon raises an important point about the impacts of language education on children with autism.  In the United States, bilingual families with children on the autism spectrum have traditionally been advised to raise those children speaking only English.  But according to new research, this advice “only intensifies the alienation experienced by these children” by isolating them from their families, who may not speak English at home.

John McLaughlin joined me for coffee, or should I say tea, to discuss his slightly emphatic reaction to recent studies looking at the role socioeconomic status has on students ability to achieve in U.S. schools. For additional perspective on this hot topic you might like to hear McLaughlin’s co-author Mark Claypool on this episode of CoffeED.

MOOCs: A Revolutionary PerspectiveJoin us for an online Town Hall with Gordon Rogers on Wednesday May 6th from 10:00am – 11:00am ESTA number of parallels exist between the new frontier of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their recognition as “academic currency” and the fate of the doomed Continental, the currency of the American colonies. Just as the revolutionary banknotes lacked credibility, the assessment instruments used by students to prove knowledge and mastery of MOOCs continue to face an uphill battle for authenticity. Until these issues are overcome, online education will be, in the eyes of many, “not worth a Continental”.But efforts are underway to achieve wider recognition and acceptance of alternative forms of credentialing. They are taking place in universities, community colleges and coding “boot-camps.” They generally fall into a framework known as “Competency Based Education” (CBE), representing the first significant step in the unbundling of American higher education. Reinventing a credentialing system that has remain largely unchanged for a century is not going to happen in a semester, but cracks are beginning to appear in the ivory tower’s foundation. Gordon Rogers, a 25-year veteran in the field of digital education and learning management, will talk about the “unbundling” trend in education and what it means for students, business and the academic world. 

David Greene shares that former NY Governor Cuomo’s education policies fly in the face of what experts cite as elements for successful schools.

Call it “No Child Left Behind-Lite,” but if it passes, The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 would still pack enough calorie-rich standardized testing to weigh down what education should be. If you like the passive-aggressive nature of the federal government’s healthcare law, you’re going to love the latest proposed NCLB-revision bill in the Senate. If you like your test scores, you can keep your test scores, because the federal government doesn’t want them. In fact, under this bill, the federal government would still mandate yearly testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school, as it did under NCLB, but it won’t tell the states how to use the scores it collects. Under the old NCLB, schools were required to use these scores to meet AYP, or “adequate yearly progress,” or face sanctions as severe as eventual shutdown.