texas

October 30, 2013

Texas Doesn’t Evolve To Common Core – Textbook Market Power Shifts

Texas has been a vocal holdout on adopting Common Core State Standards (CCSS) since the beginning. Last week all 14 publishers who submitted high school biology textbooks for adoption in TX ignored the state’s demand to include creationism. I believe these two news items are directly related and reflect a huge shift in the market dynamics for instructional materials in the United States.

Partisans think the creationism kerfuffle is because the publishers are taking a principled stand for scientific accuracy or, conversely, because they are elitist liberals. In some cases these may have been factors in publishers’ decisions. That said, I think it is much simpler and can be explained by following the money. For the publishers this was a business decision, not a political stand.

This is the clearest example to date of how CCSS is going to reshape who gets to dictate the overall structure and content of instructional materials. The hypothesis I floated in 2010 – that the combined market power of smaller states could steal the march on the big 3 (TX, CA, FL) – appears to be happening.

May 27, 2011

Librarians Rock – RIP

By Lee Wilson

In an age of information overload Librarians are the pilots who can help us quickly navigate to what is meaningful.

Said differently – librarian’s rock and they make a huge difference in schools. Here is a video made by a school for a library aid who got laid off due to the budget crisis. Think this “saving” won’t make a big difference in the education of these children?

Watch the video.

October 9, 2008

Obama and Early Childhood Education – Response From A Practitioner

By Lee Wilson

In my post about Barack Obama’s focus on early childhood education I noted that the gap between low performers and high performers gets much more difficult to bridge as students get older. Obama’s early learning proposals are pragmatic because they aim to close the achievement gap when it is easiest and most effective.

Michelle King, today’s guest blogger, makes the important point that it is the relative gap not the absolute gap that presents a challenge to teachers. Michelle is an administrator at a large urban school district and a former 1st Grade bilingual teacher.

Michelle’s insights amplify the urgency for intervening in the early grades. She also points towards a Response to Intervention (RTI) program that is addressing this challenge here in Texas.