If we don’t understand the issues, we can’t take effective action.
Many of us have a feeling that that something is wrong in education and that reform based on higher standards, improving student achievement tests and a back to basics approach will not fix it. But what exactly is the problem – and what kind of change is really needed to encourage innovative thinking, increase the motivation to learn or to help all children reach their full potential as engaged, happy and productive adults?

The good news is that the information we need to do a better job of educating our kids is already out there. Research from a wide variety of fields is giving us a much clearer picture of how human beings learn, develop and thrive and about learning opportunities that work and those that don’t.

Dive in. Take a Bite.
Find out why our schools are set up the way they are. See what the research says about why your teenager has disengaged from school or how to nurture creative thinking. Explore what boosts kids motivation to learn and what kind of learning experiences promote deep understanding. Start small or look at the big picture. Go to the resource library. Make connections. The more we share information and discuss the issues, the more informed our actions can be – as educators, parents, students, politicians and voters. If we know more about how humans learn and see the possibilities and potential of programs in action, we can lobby for the kind of changes that actually help our kids and strengthen our society.

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This Policy Proposal, from the 21st Century Learning Initiative in the UK, is written to assist those in positions of influence to initiate powerful changes to current educational arrangements. The circumstantial evidence for such a transformation of learning is drawn from the best in research and practice from around the world. The paper shows that better informed, and more effective, models of learning could be organised through a redistribution of expenditures and responsibilities, at a total cost no greater than current levels of expenditure.

No Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of competition. _ No Contest_ makes a powerful case that “healthy competition” is a contradiction in terms.

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Our public schools are in danger of collapse, and if they do, we will all pay the price.

Healthy public schools are essential for a healthy economy and creating informed citizens. But we are neglecting our schools in a perversely malicious way: making impossible demands on them, strangling them financially, creating trivial changes for the sake of ideology, avoiding necessary changes, and just plain ignoring them.

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