EdNET Insights
You may have heard of the federal Blue Ribbon Schools award program recognizing schools for academic excellence and closing the achievement gap, but did you know about the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools awards? The goal of this program is to inspire schools to strive for 21st-century excellence by highlighting promising school sustainability Read More »
Read Now »The Future of Education: Technology for Efficiency and Connection
An Interview with Katie McClarty, Chief Academic Officer, McGraw Hill School Dr. Katie McClarty, an innovative industry leader with deep expertise in psychology, assessment, and instruction, recently joined the team at McGraw Hill School Group as Chief Academic Officer. Get to know Katie and her vision for the future of education in the interview below. Read More »
Read Now »As schools continue to work to mitigate the learning loss resulting from the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, many are offering summer learning programs that combine academics and enrichment. And because of the billions of dollars in ARP ESSER funds that have been distributed to states and districts, they have the resources to invest in Read More »
Read Now »Motivation: The Key to Engagement in Online Learning
By Guest Contributor Steve Tardrew, VP of Assessment and Research, McGraw Hill School For the past two years, online technologies have allowed students to engage in learning tasks from home, often asynchronously and without direct teacher oversight. And although schools have predominantly reopened and returned to in-person instruction, online learning is likely to continue to Read More »
Read Now »Teacher Appreciation Week 2022 is May 1-7 It’s been a rough couple of years for all of us, especially our country’s teachers. They’ve had to learn how to teach remotely, help their students overcome unprecedented learning loss and support them as they face mental health challenges brought on by the isolation and uncertainty of the Read More »
Read Now »An Interesting Beginning to 2022: K-12 Market Highlights
By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe The education market seems to have quieted down a little bit in the beginning of 2022, but there are still lots of mergers and acquisitions, funding rounds closed and big personnel changes to report, including two of the industry’s biggest companies entertaining (or not?) takeover bids. Here are the highlights: Read More »
Read Now »By Guest Contributors Derek Fay, Josine Verhagen, Angelica Gonzalez, and Yuning Xu, Data Scientists at McGraw Hill A User Guide While data plays a critical role in the modern education system, data literacy is not a common component of teacher education programs. This can leave educators unprepared to evaluate data quality or know what Read More »
Read Now »How has the Pandemic Impacted Schools’ Purchasing Priorities?
By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe When in college preparing for their careers, most of today’s school leaders likely didn’t think that they would need to know about planning for in-classroom learning during a pandemic or purchasing high quality air filtration systems. In addition to having to become armchair epidemiologists, they have also faced new challenges Read More »
Read Now »Students Deserve an Answer When They Ask, “When Will I Ever Use This?” In Math Class
By Guest Contributor Margaret A. Bowman, Ph.D., Academic Designer at McGraw Hill Here’s How Technology Can Help Every math teacher has likely heard it before: “When am I ever going to use this?” While some students quickly pick up anything mathematical, others mumble through class about how they don’t like math, they aren’t good at Read More »
Read Now »How States Plan to Use Federal Pandemic Relief Funds, Part 4
The U.S. Department of Education has approved the final state and territory plans for using their American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to support the safe and sustained return to in-person learning for U.S. K-12 students. Other states and territories had their ARP ESSER plans approved in 2021. All 52 Read More »
Read Now »By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe In the words of the poet Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Headlines from the first few weeks of 2022 show that nothing could be truer of the return to school following the holidays. Thousands of K-12 schools have experienced a disruption to Read More »
Read Now »Start the Year with a Focus on Empathy in the Classroom
By Guest Contributor Amanda Schaffer, Online Professional Learning Product Manager, McGraw Hill School Understanding and responding to other people’s feelings, actions, and words is difficult. It’s perpetually a challenge for many adults, and, of course, can be very hard for young people, who are still developing the skills necessary to comprehend experiences or viewpoints outside Read More »
Read Now »Teachers and Parents Agree: Social and Emotional Learning is More Important Than Ever
By Guest Contributor Dr. Shawn Smith, Chief Innovation Officer, McGraw Hill I’ve written previously in this publication on the role of EdTech providers in a post-pandemic landscape – on embracing flexible learning models, leveraging adaptive technology, and driving with student data. Today, I want to explore the role of social and emotional learning (SEL) in that same complex landscape of K-12 education. Even in Read More »
Read Now »Three Ways COVID-19 Disrupted the K-12 School Buying Cycle
Every November, Merriam-Webster picks the “word of the year.” For 2020, it was “pandemic.” (Go figure!) While it is still a bit early for the 2021 word to be announced, it might well be “disruption.” And among the things that have been most disrupted over the past year or more is the way that we Read More »
Read Now »MDR Insights There are 95,478 public schools in America, serving over 49 million public school students. Let’s look at the different school district sizes and what types of businesses match their needs. At MDR, we consider a district large if it enrolls over 10,000 students. A medium district enrolls 2,500 to 9,999 students, and a Read More »
Read Now »A Learning Scientist’s Advice for Back to School: Let Them Play
By Guest Contributor Dylan Arena, VP, Learning Science, McGraw Hill School Group I’ve been fascinated by both learning and playing for my whole life, but it wasn’t until graduate school that I fully appreciated how related they are. Now I love to remind people that play is the most powerful adaptation for learning in the Read More »
Read Now »How States Plan to Use Federal Pandemic Relief Funds, Part 2
The U.S. Department of Education recently approved 21 state plans for use of their American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) funds. These states join 11 others and Washington, D.C. whose plans were approved earlier this year. The plans detail how each state is using and plans to use ARP ESSER funds Read More »
Read Now »By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe While back-to-school 2021 may have been more uncertain than we had previously hoped, one thing that hasn’t been uncertain this year is growth, acquisition, and investment in the education market. We previously provided you with updates on top news from the first and second quarters of 2021. At the end Read More »
Read Now »The Role of EdTech Providers in a Post-Pandemic K-12 Landscape
By Guest Contributor Dr. Shawn Smith, Chief Innovation Officer, McGraw Hill School Group We’re in a transitional moment in K-12 education. As an institution, education has always had an incremental relationship with change. But within that relatively static institution, individuals – teachers, students, principals – have been making their own changes at the scale of their classrooms, schools, and learning communities. Read More »
Read Now »By Guest Contributor Erin Werra, Skyward Behind just about every public school district is an elected school board. Here are a few considerations to cultivate harmony. It takes a village to run a public school district. Harmony is the goal, but in turbulent times like these, tension arises quickly. As communities navigate changes and challenges, defining Read More »
Read Now »Learn How States Plan to Use Federal Pandemic Relief Funds
States and school districts around the country are seeing the influx of American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) funds. The U.S. Department of Education recently approved plans from 11 states and Washington, D.C. for using the funds to safely reopen and sustain the operation of schools, and address the needs of Read More »
Read Now »Four Ways to Help Schools Keep Parents Engaged in Education
By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe Parents have always been involved in school and their children’s education. They’ve gone to PTA/PTO meetings, participated in parent-teacher conferences, volunteered in the classroom and, of course, helped with homework. But 2020 and the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic took that involvement to a whole new level. Read More »
Read Now »Five Ways COVID-19 May Have Changed Schools for the Better
As teachers exhale and hopefully get some well-deserved R&R, we thought it was time to reflect on some of the changes coming out of the COVID-19 experience. Sometimes out of chaos comes positive change, here are five ways we think schools will have changed for the better: Remote learning may be here to stay. Not Read More »
Read Now »Continued Investments, Acquisitions and Plans for Back-to-School: Q2 2021 in Review
By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe While there wasn’t quite as much activity as in the first quarter of 2021, the education space remained a hot bed of acquisition and investment activity in the second quarter with some significant initial public offerings (IPO) and leadership appointments. Here are highlights: McGraw Hill acquired Kidaptive, Inc., an adaptive Read More »
Read Now »Planning to Support Teachers for Back-to-School 2021-2022
As of April 2021, the CDC reported nearly 80 percent of teachers, school staff, and childcare workers have received at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine*, recently the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine for children as young as 12 and experts are predicting even younger children will be eligible to be vaccinated by the end Read More »
Read Now »Five Tips for Helping Schools Accelerate Social Emotional Growth
By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe There’s been a lot of talk over the past year about the “learning loss” K-12 students may have suffered as a result of the switch to remote learning, but it is also important to shine a spotlight on the toll it may have taken on their social and emotional development Read More »
Read Now »Getting the Attention of Purchasing Decision Makers
One of the major challenges in selling to education is getting your product in the right hands, using the right channels, and then securing the sale. The trick is to reach out and develop a connection so you can confidently inform decision makers, “This product will meet your needs or address your problem!” Establish Relationships Read More »
Read Now »New Federal Relief for Education in the American Rescue Plan
On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, with another round of COVID-19 relief funding for education. The new law includes: $129 billion for K-12 state education agencies, including $800 million for children experiencing homelessness $40 billion for colleges and universities $2.75 billion to governors for use by private schools Read More »
Read Now »Investments, Growth, Acquisitions & Reopening: Q1 2021 in Review
By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe Lisa Wolfe joins us again to provide an update on education news. From an education perspective, reopening schools and the status of spring assessments dominated the education headlines during the first quarter of 2021. Plus, the news of investment, growth, and acquisition in the education community during Q1 is Read More »
Read Now »New Funding for Schools Through the COVID-19 Economic Relief Bill
After months of back and forth, a new COVID-19 relief package was approved and signed into law on December 27, 2020. It includes $54.3 billion for the Education Stabilization Fund, a significant addition to the $30.75 billion that was allocated when the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was approved in March 2020. Read More »
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