Education Reform Central

Therapy Dog Listening to Young Reader Since it's Saturday, I thought you might enjoy a happy story about a successful education program that utilizes therapy dogs to help students excel. The Washington Post had a delightful article this week about the fantastic results educators are getting, using therapy dogs to help children to read. And the results are tremendous! One of the programs ... Read More

Daley Does It AGAIN! Ron Huberman, New Superintendent Chicago Public Schools Well, Mayor Daley did it! He picked Ron Huberman, his former Chief of Staff and Head of the Chicago Transit Authority since 2007, as the new Superintendent of Chicago's Public Schools. And already, the war of words has started! As I mentioned in my post on Monday, like his predecessor (Arne Duncan ... Read More

Arne Duncan, new Secretary of Education In my last post, I commented that President Barack Obama has selected Arne Duncan, former Superintendent of the Chicago School District, as his new Secretary of Education. Since I don't know Mr. Duncan personally, I've been reading every bit of information I can find about him. As I mentioned yesterday, the reviews are mixed. Seems he ... Read More

President Barack Obama Now that the pomp and circumstance, majesty and multitudes of the inauguration of our 44th President is in the history books, President Obama has "hit the ground running". He's commanded a timeline for troop withdrawals from Iraq, mandated the closing of Guantanemo Bay within one year, and gathered his advisors to work on the economic catastrophes that seem ... Read More

Alice for Fun Learning! Teaching Students to Program With Stories Alice is a 3D virtual worlds programming environment that makes it easy to create animations for either story telling or interactive games. Students can learn the intricacies of programming through enjoyable activities. Available for free download on the internet (provided by Carnegie Mellon), Alice has been used with 4th-6th grade youngsters on up ... Read More

Expensive Espresso/Cappuchino Maker! I found an article on Digg while I was "digging" some links my friends had sent to me. As I read the article, my blood began to boil, because our local schools have just been informed of more "necessary cuts", thanks to budget deficits and education funding cutbacks. NOTE: This is in spite of the fact that our state ... Read More