State Board of Education

Vision
A review of the book, The Good Society, by the late economist, John Kenneth Galbraith.
By the way, if you haven’t been lately, go visit a school–or two or four.
Effective Leaders
President Obama encourages innovation around STEM, including inviting universities to do radical things to provide more teachers:
So I want to persuade you to spend time in […]

My review of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers. Two quotes to spark your interest:
The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with.
People don’t rise from nothing. […]

This article shows how raising IQ has less to do with genes, and more to do with access to educational opportunities.
If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been […]

Brains v. Computers: something to think about.
Effective Leaders
Show me the data! Secretary Duncan writes to state school officers, explaining that if they want more money, they gotta show him the data–NAEP data, that is (and it has to be in their state report cards). Here’s the text of the letter. Another article puts […]

The State Board of Education will host the following meetings on April 16th and 17th:
Thursday, April 16, 2009 (12:00 PM, CST)
Workshop Agenda
9th Floor Andrew Johnson Tower
State Board Conference Room
710 James Robertson Parkway
Nashville, TN 37243
Friday, April 17, 2009 (8:30 AM, CST)
Meeting Agenda
1st Floor Conference Room
Andrew Johnson Tower
710 James Robertson Parkway
Nashville, TN 37243

An Education X Prize
You may recall the prize for private space exploration offered by the X Prize Foundation a couple years ago, and you may be aware they’re offering $10 million for the first 100mpg car.
They have an open call for future X Prizes, and we submitted this proposal for an education X Prize. […]