Don’t miss Gary Stager’s scathing take down of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) over at the Huffington Post.
He cites a recent review by the Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences that stated:
“The program did not increase the percentages of students in grades one, two or three whose reading comprehension scores were at or above grade level.”
From there he goes on to compare it to the Iraq War and Katrina. Ouch!
What is the future of publishing? I moderated a distinguished panel at the IIR Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix last week that tackled this question. The general thrust was that publishers need to adapt to a new environment or they will be left behind.
Nader Dareshori CEO of Aptius Learning and former CEO of Houghton Mifflin addressed the real business of publishing – spreading ideas.
Reid Lyon (bio) the architect of Reading First and CEO of Synergistic Education Solutions tackled the question of context – how materials are used matters more than the materials themselves. Publishers need to think build this into their products and business models.
Hakan Satiroglu CEO of xPlana covered how new tools are changing the structure of what is offered and how traditional publishers are struggling with this new paradigm (see my post on this topic here).
Bobbie Kurshan CEO of Curriki talked about how the Open Source community is going to play in the creation of content and how publishers can benefit for participating in the community. (see my post on Open Source in Education here).
As moderator I discussed how publishers need to move away from trying to recreate the book experience on-line to leveraging experiences only the technology can provide like virtual worlds and video games.
Follow the “keep reading” link to find an extended description of each panelist’s key points and some notes on the Q&A portion of the session. (If you are on an RSS reader you may need to click through to the original article to see this link).
The Education Business Blog