Category: Education
Training for Principals
The first initiative for the George W. Bush Institute was announced recently by former First Lady Laura Bush. The initiative will be geared toward improved performance of school principals. Why did they choose this as their focus when there are so many education issues that need to be addressed? Simply put school principals have a lot of influence on the school environment and teacher success, which in turn influences the students.
The initiative will aim to provide 50,000 principals and future principals with leadership training over the next ten years. Generally principals come from an educational background and not from a leadership background. This training is aimed at providing them with the leadership skills needed to run a school. The institute will be working with the help of other organizations to provide the training to principals and future principals.
What do you think about the first initiative? Do you think this top down approach will be successful? If you don’t where do you think they should have invested the resources first? Did they start high enough with principals or should they have considered starting at a district level? State level? National level?
Distance Education
One of our Sales Representatives recently returned from the New Mexico Technology in Education (NM TIE) conference and one of the biggest things he noticed was the attendees were predominately from Higher Education, mostly community colleges and they all had one thing on their minds – distance education.
One reason distance education continues to be a growing trend in higher education is because it is convenient and you can fit it into your schedule. This has become increasingly important as costs of higher education continue to rise in a down economy, most students are working and going to school. Distance education allows students the opportunity to do both.