New World Bank education data portal shows that Nigeria has weak early childhood programs
I was just tinkering around on the new education data portal, called Saber, launched by the World Bank in January 2014 that supposedly lets you compare education data across developing countries. I looked at Early Childhood Education programs. Data was available for only eight nations (Colombia, Kyrgyz Republic, Liberia, Nigeria, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan and Tanzania). […]
Internet instruction favored more by wealthy than poor Americans
A fascinating opinion poll released January 29, 2014 by Harris Interactive and Everest College says that high-income Americans are more open to learning over the Internet than low-income Americans. Both groups prefer hands-on learning as their first choice (52% of Americans listed active participation through hands-on training as the best learning method). But the Internet […]
New York City Independent Budget Office says per pupil spending is increasing
Per pupil funding in public schools dropped nationwide in 2011, but if New York is any indicator, it has since rebounded. A new chart, entitled, “New York City Public Schools: Have Per Pupil Budgets Changed Since 2010-2011?,” posted by the New York City Independent Budget Office on January 23, 2014, shows that per pupil spending has […]
Great English teachers improve students’ math scores
Better English teachers not only boost a student’s reading and writing performance in the short term, but they also raise their students math and English achievement in future years. That’s according to a working paper, “Learning that Lasts: Unpacking Variation in Teachers’ Effects on Students’ Long-Term Knowledge,” by a team of Stanford University and University of […]
Data show students who race through a typing app learn less, but possibly more in a reading app
A big selling point for a lot of educational software is that it’s engaging like a video game. Students are motivated to progress from level to level and so they pay attention and work hard. Some kids, and this is particularly true with competitive boys, are so motivated that they race against each other to […]
Crowdsourcing education data
Crowdsourcing was a big theme at the 2014 federal datapalooza conference devoted to education on January 15, 2014. Linked In’s Christina Allen pointed out that her company is sitting on a “large-scale data base of outcomes.” That’s because users report where the went to school and their employment history. If mined properly, the Linked In […]
Unlikely to graduate college if you take time off after high school
I’m always telling high school graduates to take time off after high school to do something interesting before college. That’s what I did. My parents feared I would never go to college. But I won out in the end. And the downtime — after the pressure cooker of high school — helped me figure out […]
Is Ed Tech Investment Slipping?
The Forbes 30 under 30 confers celebrity status to a bunch of twentysomethings in more than a dozen fields — including education. Many of them are trying to get rich at the public trough by selling educational software and high-tech tools to schools. But what caught my eye was a tally of investment dollars going […]
Kindergarteners of working mothers score higher
Here’s another data point in the mommy wars. Kindergarten children of full-time and part-time working parents score higher in both math and reading than their peers with a stay-at-home parent. But children with only a single parent had lower average test scores than either two parent scenario. That’s according to the Digest of Education Statistics 2012 that […]
