Friday, June 25, 2010

Microsoft's Philly High School Traveled Rocky Road

Here are three articles about Microsoft's School of the Future, and it's hard to believe they're about the same school.  I don't know anything more about this school than what I've read here, but it smells suspiciously familiar to the Stanford Ed School/LDH/loosey-goosey mess – and there's even the same attempt to paper over the failure by boasting that each graduating senior was "accepted to an institution of higher learning" (with no further details):

When the Microsoft-designed School of the Future opened, the facility was a paragon of contemporary architecture, with a green roof, light-filled corridors and the latest classroom technology, all housed in a dazzling white modern building.

It might as well have been a fishbowl: Educators and the media from around the world watched to see whether Microsoft could reform public education through innovation in technology.

Although the school's creative ambitions have been frustrated by high principal turnover, curriculum tensions and a student body unfamiliar with laptop computer culture, the school graduates its first senior class Tuesday with each student having been accepted to an institution of higher learning.

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Published Online: June 15, 2010

Microsoft's Philly High School Traveled Rocky Road

By The Associated Press

www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/15/361063usschoolofthefuture_ap.html 

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