Blog:

As March Madness draws to a close, basketball fans have more to worry about than just bracket busters in upcoming years.  Several tournament teams will need to ratchet up their athletes’ academic performances if they want to return to the Big Dance.  Former Harvard hoopster and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan led an effort urging university presidents to pass the 50% on track to graduate eligibility requirement for postseason play.  The new NCAA rule, that passed in October, will use an Academic Progress Rate (APR) which rewards student athletes for remaining eligible, continuing education at the same institution, and will be phased in over the next four years. 

Stanford University’s Dr. Sean Reardon’s latest research about the widening achievement gap between rich and poor students has received ample attention in the educational community as well as the popular press. In sum, Reardon examined standardized test scores in reading and math over the last forty years, and found an increasing gap (about a 40%) in achievement between high- and low-income families. These findings really shouldn’t shock anyone. Okay- perhaps the magnitude of the disparities is surprising, but Reardon’s work is one in a long line of research that finds family socio-economic background is the biggest predictor of student educational achievement. What is noteworthy is how the latest research about the impact of poverty has renewed an old debate: can schools make a difference?

I have had the privilege of meeting many wonderful educators in my 36 years of work experience. One such individual was Dr. Robert Marzano  who has documented some sound educational research.  One of his books which I used as a “bible” was ”What Works in Schools”,  in which he examined 204 different studies and found that, on average, the act of setting academic goals had an effect size of 0.55.  In other words, this means that the achievement scores in classes where clear learning goals were exhibited were 0.55 standard deviations higher than the achievement scores for classes where clear learning goals were not established. This differential translates into a 21-percentage point difference in achievement.

Not a week goes by it seems without tech companies (both old and new) competing for air time hawking the next big thing.  With the exception of maybe a company such as Apple, most of the products or solutions end up being just another cog in the increasingly crowded (and fragmented) gadget-centric economy.