The Common Core has demonstrated the power of what a voluntary, state-driven initiative can accomplish:  more efficient use of resources, cross-state comparisons, and students who can compete worldwide. The new frontier is student assessment, led by state-based assessment consortia (SBAC and PARCC) to develop systems and item banks that can...

Kalamazoo, Michigan is not a place you hear of often.  Yet back in 2005, something happened that changed everything for the unassuming town of 80,000: “The Kalamazoo Promise,” an anonymously established and endowed offering to public school graduates of tuition at any Michigan public university or college. Five years later, what...

My 4th grade son is learning fractions in his math class.  Last night, he asked my husband for some help with his homework.  I was surprised to hear my husband say that he never really learned fractions and, to this day, really struggles with the concept.  Instead of working with the raw fractions he has to first convert the...

Student perceptions and previous students’ performance are the best predictors of teacher effectiveness, according the initial findings from the Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project.  The Gates Foundation launched MET in the fall of 2009 with the goal of answering such questions as: what are common...