Curriculum 21 - Mapping the Global Classroom of the Future

Creating and using curriculum maps is a lot faster and easier when you use this in-depth resource in workshops, curriculum teams, and professional learning communities. Whether you’re introducing curriculum mapping for the first time or working with teachers and administrators who are well into the process, the manual’s collection of templates, samples, and tools helps you

This is the site for the recently-released film called "The Cartel" that is a startling portrayal of inner-city education in New Jersey. It makes, in vivid and emotional fashion, much the same case that many are making about New Jersey's urban schools. You can view the trailer, as well as some other clips, at

Hill, Laban Carrick. Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Little, Brown, Young Readers, 2009.

New York Times article on brain research applied to changing education: "The teaching of basic academic skills, until now largely the realm of tradition and guesswork, is giving way to approaches based on cognitive science. In several cities, including Boston, Washington and Nashville, schools have been experimenting with new curriculums to improve math skills in preschoolers. In others, teachers have used techniques developed by brain scientists to help children overcome dyslexia."

This ASCD Study Guide is designed to enhance your understanding and application of the information contained in Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World, an ASCD book edited by Heidi Hayes Jacobs and published in January 2010. You can use the study guide before or after you have read the book, or as you finish each chapter.

Article from The New York Times. A must read for all of us.

The new system of high school coursework with the accompanying board examinations is modeled largely on systems in high-performing nations including Denmark, Finland, England, France and Singapore.

News from ASCD on changes to NCLB

Wonderful ASCD video of Heidi Hayes Jacobs relating one of the Critical Transformations in her own life.

Wall Street Journal article: Kids in China already attend school 41 days a year more than students in the U.S. Now, schools across the country are cutting back to four-day weeks. Chester E. Finn Jr. on how to build a smarter education system.

If a proposed new English curriculum gets approved, Moon Area High School students will get to choose among eight different semester-long courses for their senior year.

When engineers use computers to design cars to be optimally streamlined, or when biophysicists simulate how a new chemotherapy drug latches onto a cancer cell, they are using numerical analysis. The mathematicians and computer scientists who pioneered this field have created highly efficient, repetitive algorithms, running billions of times per second, that enable computers to solve problems in every aspect of modern life, from biotech to Wall Street to the Internet.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs is interviewed by Visual Thesaurus. In the first part of this interview, Heidi exposes the pitfalls of American literacy instruction and explains what we can do to improve it.

Tibetans live at altitudes of 13,000 feet, breathing air that has 40 percent less oxygen than is available at sea level, yet suffer very little mountain sickness. The reason, according to a team of biologists in China, is human evolution, in what may be the most recent and fastest instance detected so far.

edited by Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Contrtoverisal stand in Mark Slouka's

The experimental approach is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in U.S. schools.  

Renowned Harvard Business School professor and author Clayton Christensen discusses the principles of "innovation" and the dilemma faced by all school leaders in confronting the challenge to change the model of education in an age of disruptive technologies and ideas.  In this video, he discusses the ideas offered in his recently published book,