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More and more coures/degrees are being offered online. However, most course content remains a mixture of text and hyperlinks. Funds are needed for colleges to develop high quality digital, interactive content. Software programs that allow instructors to create digital content is often too expensive for colleges to purchase. Also, instructors do not have the skill sets required to develop content using these programs.... more »

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act Section 508 colleges are required to offer online courses/degrees that meet these guidelines. However, this requires expensive HTML programming and in many cases redesigning of current content. Assistive technologies such as JAWS are very exoensive yet needed in the development of accessble content. Some states such as North Carolina have additional laws, NC Senate Bill... more »

In response to Adam M. Smith's suggestion for "chunks" of instruction materials instead of entire on-line books, there is already something like this available, called Advanced Distributed Learning, which is run by ADL CoLabs, in the federal government: http://www.adlnet.gov

There are not enough characters for me to tell all that is wrong with this, but I will do my best. First of all this so called document needs to be scrapped or several ammendments need to be added. My grandchildren are going through the same school system that my grown children went through. There is no way a teacher can provide a lesson plan that is compatible for the whole class the way it is. There are advanced,... more »

I've thought for many years that it's very odd how we make kids advance one year at a time in all subjects regardless of how they're doing on any individual one. And then, if worse comes to worse, we keep them back a whole grade, or move them forward even though they haven't mastered the material. In real life, we don't couple all kinds of tasks and rewards that aren't logically linked. The over-broad nature of year-long... more »

https://innovation.ed.gov/ The Portal site has more features, and no plans to curtail or cease operations (this site stops accepting submissions on March 19, 2010)... From the Portal's homepage: "The Department of Education has developed this Portal as an online forum where key stakeholders in education can share their innovative ideas and collaborate to turn those ideas into a new reality. By connecting an idea from... more »

I feel standards of physical fitness and wellness should be publicized for school districts. Identifying some goals for flexibility, endurance, cardiovascular capacity and strength would give districts real targets for children at various stages and ages. Too often the emphasis is on sports, but a focus on wellness and fitness would benefit a broader group as well as be cheaper overall. Basic calisthenics, bodyweight... more »

I feel that Teen Driving Programs should be supported by the Georgia lottery and be put into action just as The Lottery supports the beginning of a child's education, so should preparation for leaving school be implemented.

This would save lots of lives and reduce accidents by offering educational driving skills and not learning from mistakes and unsafe manuevering that the parents may teach.

I think we need a FIPSE proposal for dual degree/certificates/mobility and/or elearning arrangements with universities in India.

Doctors, Lawyers, Police, Paramedics, Nurses, Dentists, Pharmacy technicians, CPA's, Vehicle drivers, and Businesses just to name a few...face losing their license to practice for their failure to act or perform their duty. The only profession in the country where a licensed professional is not held accountable for their dereliction of duty is EDUCATION. When there has been a finding that the school district has denied... more »

If the teachers and the teachers unions had the students best interests first and foremost in mind then they would have some measure of credibility.

The current situation in Rhode Island where the entire staff was fired should not be the exception. The Teachers Unions need to be broken nationwide. The Teacher's Unions do not have the best interests of the students in mind.

That is a conflict of interest.

Thomas Jefferson was educated in the classical method. We need to bring that back today. Educate in the classics and incorporate the modern technology. This is not a new way of doing business nor is it a new tool, but it was set aside over 100 years ago and needs to be re-implemented.

Do not remove accountability for students with disabilities by requiring reporting of only large groups (few parents of SWD care if there are only 3 or 5 people reported since larger numbers mean that schools can continue to deny FAPE and discriminate without accountability), by exempting alternative schools (in which many if not most are SWD who have been denied FAPE) from reconstitution, by continuing to believe what... more »

School Districts should be held accountable on how they spend federal and state funding on special education students. The special education students with learning disabilities performance should be reflected in the school district's performance as a whole. An IEP should not determine how much funds an SD will spend on a child, since 99% of the time the child does not receive the services even with an IEP in place.

1. Make public, rapidly, all USDOE program offices' work, including correspodence, re requiring SEAs to correct negative audit findings, especially those related to USDOE-funded program implementation and SEAs' objections to corrective action recommendations. Make public, rapidly, USDOE assessments of actual SEA implementation of corrective actions. Stop blindly accepting SEA assurances that they have actually implemented... more »