Technical Education

SmartBrief is a news aggregator that provides daily news briefs tailored to several topic areas, including education technology. This daily news dose provides information on all things involving digital learning.

THE Journal is an education technology news website whose focus is on “transforming education through technology.” This resource provides up-to-date news on education technology research and innovations around the country.

The Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLCs), sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, profiled the 20 grantees of its third wave of grant funding, Breakthrough School Models for College Readiness. The profiles provide a snapshot of these 20 next-generation blended school models at their inception and include overviews of the tools the grantees plan to use and the populations they will serve.

This Public Impact webpage provides an overview table and detailed descriptions of school models that redesign jobs, and in some cases, use technology in new ways, to extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students.

The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) was established by the U.S. Department of Education in 2006 and was designed to support performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems in high-need schools, funded mostly by grants. To apply and qualify for one of these grants, the applicants must design a system in high-need schools with differentiated levels of compensation for teacher and students based upon metrics such as student achievement gains. This webpage provides a list of successful TIF grantees with links to their applications.

This Public Impact webpage contains links to financial analyses of three of the 20+ Opportunity Culture school models. Savings and cost calculations of the models—Elementary Subject Specialization, Multi-Classroom Leadership, and Time-Technology Swap Rotation—illustrate that schools could increase excellent teachers’ pay up to approximately 130 percent, without increasing class sizes and within available budgets. In some variations, schools may pay all teachers more, sustainably.