Greetings. Glad you got some good guest-blogging while I was on vacation. I’m still catching up, but here are a couple tidbits of interest from the high school world:
The James Irvine Foundation has laid a bunch of money on 10 California school districts to start or expand “multiple pathways” approaches to high school graduation. The $11.3 million in grants announced last week by the San Francisco-based foundation will help districts design comprehensive systems that offer students a range of options, from more traditional study to a variety of “industry-themed” programs like construction and building design or biomedical sciences. The grant will be administered by ConnectEd, a Berkeley-based group that is already doing extensive multiple-pathways work in California.
The grants seem to fall in line with increasing interest in multiple-pathways work in California (although New York City pioneered the idea big-time). A bill passed by the California legislature last year requires the state to do a feasibility study on expanding such work.
On a different topic, the Alliance for Excellent Education has a new collection out that explores what the future of assessment could hold as the next generation of high school reform takes shape: it’s Meaningful Measurement: The Role of Assessments in Improving High School Education in the Twenty-First Century.