管理全美第二大學區的洛杉磯教育委員會十八日以六比零的票數，一致通過iPad採用案。洛杉磯學區從幼稚園到十二年級的學生總人數多達六十四萬人。委員會認為iPad符合教學規格，而且最便宜。根據學生與老師試用過多種產品後的評比，iPad也拿到最高分。
九億元訂單敗陣 微軟吃味
學校向蘋果購買iPad的價格為一台六百七十八美元（約台幣兩萬零三百元）比一般市價貴，但裡頭已經安裝好培生（Pearson）公司的教科書軟體，以及iWork、iTunes、iLife等可用於學習、處理文書的軟體。
由 於這筆訂單金額龐大，蘋果的死對頭微軟顯然不甘心敗下陣來，呼籲委員會多試用其他產品，將微軟推出的平板也列入考慮。微軟人員表示市場上大多數企業都使用 微軟的視窗系統，學生應該也要熟悉這些未來在職場上可能會運用到的平台。不過，學區職員表示，iPad品質優越，若要求部分學生使用不同或較差的產品，對 學生來說，並不公平。
已故蘋果共同創辦人賈伯斯的傳記作者艾薩克森表示，賈伯斯到晚年仍掛念著以iPad改變教科書市場的計畫。賈伯斯二○一一年初曾對新聞集團主席梅鐸說，iPad會淘汰紙本教科書。
隨著平板電腦越來越熱門，教育機構使用iPad的情況也日漸普遍。去年的數據顯示，在教育機構中，蘋果的iPad正取代傳統的個人電腦。目前全美的學校使用iPad數達一千萬台。除了在教學時增加學生的參與機會，學校也可減少印製教材，節省開支。
Daily News Roundup, June 20, 2013
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ABOUT K-12
HOMELESS, HIGHLY MOBILE STUDENTS FACE ACADEMIC RISK BEYOND POVERTY
Homeless, highly mobile children are arguably the most at-risk of any students, well beyond the academic difficulties created by poverty alone. But many can persist and recover academically once their living arrangements stabilize, according to a new study in this month's Child Development. researchers found students who had ever been homeless or highly mobile during the study had significantly lower academic achievement in reading and math throughout elementary and middle school—and lower rates of academic growth—than students who had stable homes. The findings held even for those in families with very low income, special education students, and English-language learners. The post is from Education Week’s Inside School Research blog.
REPUBLICAN-LED HOUSE COMMITTEE PASSES NEW EDUCATION BILL
A Republican-controlled House committee Wednesday approved a new version of the country’s main education law that would sharply shrink the federal role in K-12 public schools. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce voted along party lines, 23 to 16, on a bill to replace No Child Left Behind, the George W. Bush-era law that marked a significant expansion of federal authority in local school matters. The article is in The Washington Post.
BENEFITS OF ONLINE, FACE-TO-FACE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SIMILAR, STUDY FINDS
Online teacher professional development has the same effect on student learning and teacher behavior as more traditional face-to-face models, according to a new research study to be published next month by the Journal of Teacher Education. The study, which controlled for factors such as teacher experience and student demographics, compared the experiences of teachers charged with implementing a new high school environmental science curriculum. One group of teachers in the study participated in 48 hours of face-to-face workshops spread over six days, while their counterparts worked at their own pace through an online workshop covering the same content. The post is from Education Week’s Digital Education blog.
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LAX EDUCATION IN HUMANITIES, SOCIAL SCIENCES SPARK OUTCRY
A new report argues that humanities and social sciences are as essential to the country's economic and civic future as science and technology. The study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was commissioned in 2010 by a bipartisan group of members of Congress. It comes at a time when the value of the liberal arts is being challenged by economic and political forces. The piece ran on NPR’s Morning Edition.
CONSORTIUM MAY TAKE BACK CONTROL OF ONLINE OFFERINGS
Colleges looking to expand their online course offerings have often enlisted help from education-technology companies. A college might buy a learning-management system from Blackboard, e-tutoring software from Pearson, and so on. Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based company that specializes in massive open online courses, recently became the latest technology firm to offer services aimed at credit-bearing online programs at large universities. Now the provosts in a consortium of major research universities are considering whether their group should build its own online infrastructure that would enable the universities to share courses, digital resources, and data without ceding control to outsiders. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
NEW MODEL, FAMILIAR FACE
A veteran of for-profit higher education has built a new online learning portal, this time a nonprofit. And Michael K. Clifford’s DreamDegree.org, which went live last month, already offers 27 courses that can lead to college credit at many colleges. The site’s general education courses range from English composition to computer applications and intermediate algebra. They are instructor-led but self-paced, and are designed to be completed in six to eight weeks. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
SALARY DATA FOR CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES
California's community college system this week unveiled a new Web tool that provides average salary levels of graduates of the state's 112 two-year colleges. The Salary Surfer database includes wage data for graduates of degree and certificate programs in about 25 disciplines. It lists the median annual salary for students two years before, two years after and five years after earning a specific credential. In April the system released Web-based "scorecards" on student performance at each college. The information is from Inside Higher Ed’s Quick Takes.
Daily News Roundup, June 19, 2013
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ABOUT K-12
COMMON CORE: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Richard Laine of the National Governors Association and Chris Minnich, Council of Chief State School Officers, write in Education Week: In 2009, governors, state superintendents, state boards of education, teachers, parents, and business leaders took the historic step of planning for a shared set of rigorous and easy-to-understand state academic standards in English/language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. The new standards, which were released in 2010, clearly define what students need to know, and how well they need to know these things at each grade level, to be able to graduate from high school ready for success in college or a career-training program. In recent months, however, a number of myths have started circulating in the policy community and the media about these standards. As representatives of the two organizations that facilitated the development of the Common Core State Standards—the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers—we believe it is important to address some of the questions that have been raised about the common core.
COMPETING BILLS TO REFORM NCLB
Under legislation proposed by John Kline, the Republican representative from Minnesota and chair of the House Education Committee, schools would not have to meet federally prescribed performance goals -- a proposal markedly different from current law, the Obama administration's waiver system and a competing bill offered up by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). Kline's bill also consolidates a slew of programs specifically devoted to things like English language learners and neglected children into Title I, a program devoted to helping schools with poor students. Kline's bill is expected to pass through his Republican-dominated committee, and he says House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told him to expect a floor vote in the middle of July. But even if it passes the full House, it's hard to see a situation in which a conference committee could knit together the House's and Senate's wildly different visions of NCLB reform. The article is in the Huffington Post.
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MOOC-SKEPTICAL PROVOSTS
The provosts of Big 10 universities and the University of Chicago are in high-level talks to create an online education network across their campuses, which collectively enroll more than 500,000 students a year. And these provosts from some of America’s top research universities have concluded that they – not corporate entrepreneurs and investors -- must drive online education efforts. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
BACHELOR’S DEGREE HOLDERS WHO ATTEND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that 6.1 percent of students who earned bachelor's degrees in 2009-10 later enrolled at a two-year college, down from 6.5 percent in 2008-9. That decrease might be due to the economy's partial recovery, according to the center, a nonprofit group that collects data on 94 percent of college students. The pattern is most common among graduates of public institutions, according to the data. This information is from Inside Higher Ed’s Quick Takes.
TED TALKS: VISIBILITY BUT NOT CITATIONS
While giving a TED Talk may raise an academic’s visibility online, it has little impact on how researchers are viewed within their own disciplines, a new study suggests. Specifically, the study found that giving a presentation at TED, an annual conference on technology and society, appears to have no effect on the number of citations a scholar’s work receives after a video of the presentation goes online. The article is from The Chronicle of Higher Education ‘s Wired Campus blog.
Daily News Roundup, June 18, 2013
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UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS THAT TRAIN TEACHERS GET MEDIOCRE MARKS
The vast majority of the 1,430 education programs that prepare the nation’s K-12 teachers are mediocre, according to a first-ever ranking that immediately touched off a firestorm. Released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based advocacy group, the rankings are part of a $5 million project funded by major U.S. foundations. Education secretaries in 21 states have endorsed the report, but some universities and education experts quickly assailed the review as incomplete and inaccurate. The article is in The Washington Post.
LUMINA PRESIDENT ON INCREASING GRADUATION RATES
In February 2009, President Obama declared that “ ... by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” Around the same time, Lumina Foundation released its first strategic plan in 2009 with the goal that 60% of Americans obtain a high-quality postsecondary degree or credential by 2025—a goal Lumina now calls Goal 2025. Expansion of undergraduate enrollments and the need to improve degree-completion rates—essential in both the Obama plan and Goal 2025—call for recasting the role of American colleges and universities and system-level change to improve student access and success in higher education. Lumina President Jamie Merisotis observes in the New England Journal of Higher Education that there are significant obstacles that stand in the way of these attainment efforts.
COMMUNITY COLLEGE COUNSELING GAINS
A new study provides evidence of slow and steady recognition that mental health services matter at two-year colleges. Data from the American College Counseling Association show that even as their enrollments have swelled, community college counseling centers continue to have proportionally fewer resources than do their counterparts at four-year institutions. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
ABOUT K-12
DUNCAN TO ALLOW WAIVER STATES FLEXIBILITY IN TEACHER EVALUATIONS
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will call today for a new process allowing states that have gotten waivers from parts of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act some flexibility in using student achievement to evaluate teachers, sources say. Teacher evaluation based in part on student outcomes (i.e. test scores) has been the most difficult piece of the waiver framework. And it's become even more complicated as states begin to embrace the Common Core State Standards, which mean new, higher expectations for students. The post is from Education Week’s Politics K-12 blog.
Daily News Roundup, June 17, 2013
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ABOUT K-12
OUR SCHOOLS, CUT OFF FROM THE WEB
Ford Foundation President Luis A. Ubiñas writes in The New York Times: The factors that will drive our national future — educational achievement, a healthy population, broad political participation and economic opportunity for all — depend in significant ways on how we structure and manage our spreading digital frontier. About 19 million Americans still lack access to high-speed broadband; many more can’t afford it. Virtually all of America’s schools are connected to the Internet today. But that success is a lot like trumpeting, a century ago, that virtually every town in the country was reachable by road. Then, as now, the question is quality. Children who go to school in poor neighborhoods are connected to the Web at speeds so slow as to render most educational Web sites unusable. The exploding world of free online courses from great academies is closed to those who lack a digital pathway.
MARYLAND APPROVES TEACHER, PRINCIPAL EVALUATION PLANS
The Maryland education department has approved 21 out of 22 teacher and principal evaluation plans that are required to take effect for the 2013-14 school year. The state asked districts to ensure that the Maryland School Assessment comprised 20% of the measure for evaluating teachers. Districts had to have new teacher evaluation systems in place to comply with the states' Race to the Top grant. The article is from the Washington Post.
ARE MARYLAND’S TEACHER EVALUATION DEALS A HOAX?
Maryland may have announced new teacher evaluation deals with districts on June 13, but the key parties involved can't even agree on what they mean. On June 13, the Maryland State Department of Education announced that it had reached agreements regarding teacher evaluations with 21 of the 22 county school districts in the state that needed to submit acceptable deals by June 7 (just a few signatures were needed to approve the pending deal in Baltimore city). But that word "agreements" could end up meaning very little to nothing at all, especially after the 2013-14 school year. The post is from Education Week’s State Ed Watch blog.
FUNDING FOR COMMON CORE IMPLEMENTATION ENDS WITH GOV. SNYDER’S SIGNATURE
Michigan joined Indiana as the only other state to halt implementing the Common Core standards after Gov. Rick Snyder signed the state's budget. The House Speaker said lawmakers will revisit the standards in the fall. Both houses of the legislature voted to prohibit any spending on implementing the standards or the related assessments without prior legislative authorization. The post is from Mlive.com.
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CREDIT CREEP
Few community college students graduate on time. One reason many spend extra time and money trying to earn associate degrees is because community colleges often require more than 60 credits to meet academic program requirements. Most four-year institutions now stick to the standard of 120 credit hours, according to a study conducted last year for Complete College America. But community colleges are a different story. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
WHY WE FEAR MOOCS
Regent University Professor Mary Manjikian writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s The Conversation blog: As hybrids, MOOCs defy easy categorization and threaten to upset the tidy categories we have for judging who is and is not college-educated. Like monsters, MOOCs threaten to disrupt our social world and bring chaos in their wake. Our most basic understanding of the college experience used to be twofold: It occurs during a finite period of time, and in a fixed place known as a campus. Those two assumptions have taken on the status of “social facts,” in the words of Émile Durkheim. Both of those ideas are so much a part of our culture that we often do not even notice them or think to question them.
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