Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

For more than the past decade, states have published grades and ranks of their schools as part of the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), a federal mandate first signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. Since that time, many states have developed a system that uses common measures such as  standardized-test scores and graduation rates to generate letter-grade report cards for schools, similar to the ones that students are issued. Over the years this practice has raised questions and generated a national debate on its effectiveness in the overall national mission to support a quality education for all students. Late in 2015, President Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), replacing NCLB. While ESSA wasn’t designed to eliminate standardized testing and ranking measures, it does pave the way for states to think differently about the practice of grading and ranking schools as it relates to accountability, which has only served to fu...

Brady (11) and Cameron (9) Stack I made the mistake of bringing Brady and Cameron, my eleven and nine year old boys, with me last month to the store when it was time to upgrade my phone. Much to the dismay of my wife Erica, in addition to getting a new phone the salesperson also sweet talked me into buying a virtual reality (VR) headset like one of these . If you haven’t yet tried one, they are quite the experience. Within minutes, my boys were sailing through the air on hand gliders and riding roller coasters through mystical caves and magical forests. These headsets generally work with a cell phone, amplifying the visual and audio experience of a game or video, stimulating multiple senses, and making the user feel like they are truly a part of the experience that they are in. As with any new technology, innovators are looking for ways to make VR an effective classroom tool. Edtech companies like foundry10 are exploring this topic further by asking questions like this: Ho...

Does this story sound familiar to you? It is a typical weekday evening at home. Our family has just finished eating dinner together. The kitchen has been cleaned up, lunches have been packed for school the next day, and my wife Erica and I both sit down and start to scroll through the many notifications that have popped up on our phones from both email and social media over the past couple of hours. Before we realize it, half an hour has passed and we are startled by the chiming of the clock in the dining room. As we both look up, we notice that our children are doing the exact same thing that we are - mindlessly scrolling through things on their devices. We both lock eyes on each other and our expressions tell us we are both thinking exactly the same thing. Has too much technology started to become a bad thing for our kids, and us? Earlier this month, Education Week’s Matthew Lynch blogged about how screens can turn kids into “digital addicts.” Lynch noted recent research ...