SIIA Education Business Forum
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What's New?
Learn more about the latest standards updates including Nebraska ELA.
Standards updates are always available in the AB Knowledgebase under "What's New".
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Academic Benchmarks
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 In a matter of only hours, scores of ghosts, pirates, and superheroes will descend on our streets and neighborhoods hoping to find candy bowls stocked with their favorites. Given the occasion, we thought it was timely make sure that your favorites are in the AB Snapshot "candy bowl". We want the AB Snapshot to be an interesting and valuable addition to your inbox. Let us know what you think and take the survey.
From all of us at AB, have a safe and enjoyable Halloween.
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DataContent Conference, Data is Destiny
The theme of SIIA's 21st annual DataContent conference, "Data is destiny" aptly described the mission of this year's gathering held in Philadelphia. Keynote presenters from IBM and Responsible Science along with 30 panelists and over 150 attendees from a wide range of software, information, and data content companies discussed that while success is not inevitable, data's centralization allows for continued growth opportunities.
IBM's CIO Jeanette Horan shared that 90% of the world's data was produced in the last 2 years, a staggering number that demonstrates the need for new solutions to harness the potential of ever-expanding data collections.
At AB, we are developing next generation tools to help you leverage our ever-growing database of standards from around the world. We have welcomed a number of new clients who are implementing our APIs and applications to build smarter solutions for the education industry. Let us know how big data is affecting your business.
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National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) Conference
The 135 representatives from states school systems, policy institutes, organizations like PARCC, SBAC and Achieve, and industry-specific companies came together for a 2-day meeting in Baltimore to discuss the state of Career and Technical Education (CTE). The conference offered state policy updates, addressed competency-based education and career readiness data and reporting and brought in voices from CCSS and private business like IBM, Lockheed Martin, and Meridian Technology Center to discuss implementation strategies.
For AB, the major takeaways include: more states are integrating CTE standards into traditional academic tracts which is in line with federal policy movement on securing funding for this kind of education; competency-based education will require more assessments; and focusing on delivery systems is vital to those in the CTE community. As John Fischer, NASDCTEc President remarked, "CTEs are so diverse, which could be their weakness, but which we should consider their strength." |
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Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, with a mission of advancing educational excellence released a report this week, "Common Core in the Schools: A First Look at Reading Assignments." Serving as a baseline for what early implementation of CCSS looks like in schools, the surveys contributing to this report reveal that teachers are gearing reading assignments to skill level as opposed to grade level. Some have concluded that teachers are setting low expectations for students, which is happening more in primary school than high school. Check out the full report.
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
Despite the fact that Washington State recently became the next state to adopt NGSS, the debate in Kentucky remains center stage in the news. Kentucky adopted the standards in June 2013 and since then Governor Steve Beshear, a proponent of NGSS, has fought with the opposing legislature about its ultimate adoption and implementation. Some say the standards have the support of the science and business community while others argue the standards omit key concepts. A small regulation committee rejected NGSS in September and the Governor has been trying in various ways to override their decision. To date, 8 states have adopted NGSS with implementation dates ranging from 2014 to 2017.
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