The Education Nation Conference recently held in NYC was a big-buzz event.  There seems to be a growing consensus feeling in education circles that the time has come for educational technologies to ‘put up or shut up.’  Alter claims to have gone in to the conference as a skeptic and come out of it as a qualified supporter. 

by Jonathan Alter / Bloomberg View / 29 September 2011

Illustrator: Andy Rementer

The education reform movement is at an important juncture. It will either peter out in platitudes or advance based on a new consensus. At this week’s Education Nation conference in New York City, I came away with some hope for the latter. My cautious optimism is rooted in two Ts — technology and transparency.

In the pitched battles between reformers and traditionalists, I’ve been passionately on the side of the reformers for almost 20 years. With the help of the last four presidents, they’ve made progress against the education establishment in pushing for accountability, common standards, charter schools, merit pay and rigorous teacher evaluation.

But traditionalists in the unions and the business-as-usual bureaucracy have recently been successful in depicting reformers as teacher-bashers (not guilty) and as overreliant on test scores in reading and math at the expense of other subjects (guilty).

Even if they cordially despise each other, reformers and traditionalists will now have to work together to implement the new accountability laws enacted in the past few years in about a dozen states.

One way to do so is by embracing smart new technology.

To read more…

Image Source:  article (Andy Rementer, illustrator)