Research consistently confirms there are two critical ways to raise test scores on standardized tests: Build “cognitive flexibility” with metacognitive strategies.1 If students don’t have problem-solving strategies for learning the content, well… they won’t learn it! Obviously. Teach the curriculum, not “to the test.” Teaching “to the test” –also known as “item teaching”– actually lowers test scores; Today is the beginning of the largest policy conference in the country, the Mackinac Policy Conference (MPC). Right now, Brian and I are on our way up to Michigan’s magnificent Mackinac Island to participate. The MPC gets it’s name from the conference location, but the focus is primarily on the city of Detroit. The #1 topic “I am convinced that a ‘good’ teacher is a ‘self-abuser’ teacher!!” My grad-school professor said this in class one day. He was lamenting that his wife, a kindergarten teacher, had been on leave for two years to have their two children. He specialized in reading development and used his wife’s classroom as an observational “lab” Why Do You Have to Work So Hard to Make Students Learn? You work harder and harder, but clearly feel a drag. You are tasked with more things to do, document, and correlate every day. Your extended efforts never seem to be enough. Students become more apathetic. Many people are quick to blame technology. But, On Sunday, I had the opportunity to deliver the following message of inspiration to 5000 educators at ASCD’s Empower 17 Conference. We sponsored a special showing of Disney’s World of Color as a “thank you” to educators… Good evening! As you settle in to enjoy the show, I encourage you to think back to when you Any chance you’ll be in Anaheim, CA at the ASCD Empower17 Conference, March 25-27? We’ll be there and we’d love to meet you in person! You can find us at booth #1567. Just look for the giant “StudySkills.com” banner. Also, join us at Disney’s California Adventure Park on Sunday night for the World of Color Just a few weeks ago, we ordered some new return address labels. See anything wrong? About 100 went out before we caught the mistake. Oops! And, every so often, we publish an email or blog post with a typo or two. Oops! In our company, we all live and breathe the content we publish. Every single I recently read about a school where graduation rates rose from 73% to 90%. And, their dropout rate fell from 14% to 3%. All in less than five years! If you’re like me, you want to know, “How!?” The Walker County Board of Education in Jasper, Alabama accomplished this through online education. The school district setup In a previous article, I described Three Core Problems with US Education: Core Problem #1: There is a serious motivation crisis among our students. Core Problem #2: There is a lack of relevance in our curriculum. Core Problem #3: We are using completely irrational and ineffective models for learning. Within each problem, there are simple In the previous article, I introduced The Success Pyramid, a simple model showing the three elements of effective and efficient learning. These three levels have a direct link to brain biology. The brain is powered by electricity, just like any electrical appliance. It is made of billions of tiny wires (neurons) that send electrical impulses across various regions of theDetroit: A Vision for the Worst-Performing School System in the World
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