Teacher-effectiveness programs funded by the Gates Foundation didn’t improve students’ achievement, reports Madeline Will in Ed Week. A RAND analysis, also funded by Gates, found “no big payoffs in terms of improved graduation [rates] or achievement of students in general, and low-income and minority students in particular,” said Brian Stecher, the lead author. . . . the Gates Foundation gave grants to three large school districts—Memphis, Tenn. (which merged with Shelby Coun

Educators are obsessed with innovation, while ignoring the tried and true, writes Mike Schmoker in Education Week. For example, “ongoing monitoring and adjustments to teaching, informed by feedback, may have more impact on learning than any other instructional factor,” he writes. In Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov “identifies ‘checking for understanding’ as the pivotal element in an effective lesson.” I know teachers in two different schools in the same district whose adopt

The 74 is running excerpts from the book. “Schools work better when their leaders have the autonomy to run their schools; when they are held accountable for performance, with consequences for success and failure; when parents can choose among diverse public school models; and when those in charge of steering the district don’t also row (operate schools),” argues Osborne in a Boston Globe column. Autonomy means that school leaders make the key decisions: whom to hire and fire,

Most valedictorians don’t become “disruptive” innovators — or millionaires, reports The 74. “[Valedictorians] do well, but they don’t go on to change the world or lead the world. School rewards people who follow the rules, not people who shake things up,” Eric Barker, author of Barking up the Wrong Tree, told Fox Business. “Academic grades correlate only loosely with intelligence,” he said. Instead, they reflect “self-discipline, conscientiousness, and the ability to comply w

Indianapolis is expanding school choice, writes David Osborne in Education Next. In addition to having a mayor who can authorize charter schools, the city now has “innovation network schools” authorized by Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS). Some are charters, some are startups, and some are existing IPS schools that have converted. All are not-for-profit organizations with independent boards, operating outside the teachers union contract. But all use IPS school buildings and

New high schools are “demolishing the classroom,”, writes Leslie Nguyen-Okwu on OZY. With a $10 million grant from the XQ: Super Schools Project, New Harmony High in Louisiana will put students on barges to study rising sea levels and coastal preservation. . . . students will learn in a living, breathing lab on the water and get hands-on experience in studying biology, river ecology and environmental justice, in addition to the usual reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic. “[The stu