Most students “meet the demands of their assignments” more than two-thirds of the time, yet demonstrate mastery of grade-level standards only 17 percent of the time, concludes TNTP’s new report, The Opportunity Myth. That’s because assignments are so easy: Few ask for grade-level work. Most students don’t have access to grade-level assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement and teachers with high expectations, TNTP concludes, based on a study of four school districts (t

Baptiste Delvallé doesn’t let students retake quizzes and tests, he writes in Education Week. Here’s how I explain it to my students. If you’re asked to meet a deadline in a future job, and you’re late or have poor-quality work, you might get fired. If you’re in a relationship and don’t show up to the dates, you might get dumped. If you cross the road without looking, and a car comes zooming by, you don’t get a second chance. I prefer that they get a bad grade and learn to gi

When it is fun, it’s often because of “cognitive struggle,” the joy of doing what’s hard, Boser believes. As a teacher, Cepeda is tired of “education professionals, parents and, most of all, kids,” who believe “that learning should exclusively be an easy stream of fun, laughs and joy.” Learn Better offers a host of frameworks, strategies and tips for acquiring new knowledge — whether it be collaborating on projects for school, learning a new skill at work, or improving your b

Most people don’t learn much in college beyond basic literacy and numeracy, writes Bryan Caplan in The Atlantic. A degree shows mastery of the hoop-jumping skills that employers favor. An economics professor, Caplan has written a book titled The Case Against Education. The vast majority of students are “philistines” with little interest in the life of the mind, writes Caplan, who calls himself a “cynical idealist.” Indeed, today’s college students are less willing than those

Students who believe they can get smarter learn more, conclude researchers Susana Claro and Susanna Loeb. They analyzed data from five California school districts that measure growth mindset for students in 3rd to 8th grade, comparing students with similar past achievement. Those with a stronger growth mindset learned more in a given year than those believed their intelligence was fixed. Students were asked to react to four statements: My intelligence is something that I can’

Technology hasn’t transformed teaching and learning, notes Education Next, but some believe that’s due to “implementation problems — or evidence that we haven’t yet deployed the right tools or the most effective strategies.” But what if technology is the problem? In a forum, Daniel Scoggin, co-founder of the GreatHearts classical charter-school network, argues for face-to-face dialogue and inquiry. Tom Vander Ark, CEO of the advisory firm Getting Smart, believes wisely employ

The University of Cambridge has appointed the world’s first Lego professor of play, writes Tom Bennett in The Guardian.  Young children learn to understand the world through play, writes Bennett, the father of a one-year-old explorer, but it takes work to get beyond the basics. Lego has endowed a chair in “play” at Cambridge. This isn’t it. “Take catching a ball,” Bennett writes. “In its first few comedic years, a child will learn to have a good idea of how far a ball can be

In their fourth year of college, many students can’t gather, analyze and evaluate information, concludes a Wall Street Journal report. At a majority of colleges surveyed, “at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table.” The College Learning Assessment Plus, or CLA+, asks first-year and graduating students to demonstrate critical thinking skills, reports Newsweek. The Journal found

Too many American colleges have become “institutions of higher daycare,” writes Lance Morrow, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in a biting essay on the chaos at Evergreen State College in Washington. Bret Weinstein, a biology professor, argued — rationally and courteously — against asking all whites to leave campus for a day as a protest against racism. Fifty students surrounded him after class to “shout him down, curse at him and demand his resignation,” repo