Moving Forward with a New ED.gov - ED.gov Blog

Moving Forward with a New ED.gov - ED.gov Blog

Moving Forward with a New ED.gov

A new ED.gov is coming. The transformation is already underway and includes a brand-new look-and-feel and a critical rethinking of how we effectively communicate online. The goal: a digital experience where you can find what you need, discover things you did not know, and leave feeling satisfied. 

Step 1: Plan

In the fall of 2019 ED began planning for the redesign of ED.gov, creating a number of internal Innovation Teams charged to lead the effort. The teams rewrote web governance policy, created new standards, and began developing the roadmap for the future. ED also hosted an open innovation challenge calling for input from across the country to help shape the design of the new ED.gov. The result was an ED.gov prototype that would define our path forward.

Meanwhile, ED has been diligently conducting user research, consulting with experts, and preparing the requirements for a modernized ED.gov that will meet the primary tenants of the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act:

1. Accessible – be accessible to individuals with disabilities in accordance with Section 508
2. Consistent – have a consistent appearance
3. Authoritative – not overlap with or duplicate existing websites
4. Searchable – contain a search function
5. Secure – be provided through a secure connection
6. User-centered – be designed around user needs with data-driven analysis
7. Customizable – provide an option for a more customized digital experience
8. Mobile-friendly – be functional and usable on mobile devices

Step 2: Prepare 

To consider the modernization of ED.gov a purely technical challenge would be short-sighted. Truly improving the user experience for our website visitors requires thorough evaluation of the content we create. Are we communicating with the American public in the best way possible? We’ve examined the web analytics and the short answer is, probably not.

One of the biggest problems: it’s been awhile since we’ve cleaned up our content.  For nearly 20 years our website has been accumulating content without regular consideration of whether things are still relevant, up-to-date or useful. Now we’re ready to change that. Beginning today, ED will begin to implement new content lifecycle management standards; the new rules for how we maintain content on the web. These new standards are rooted in research and borrowed heavily from industry best practices. Over the next couple of months we will begin to remove content from ED.gov that does not meet these new standards.

Focusing our web content to only include information that is useful, accurate, and up-to-date will help users better find what they need. This means you won’t be wasting time wading through outdated content; and we hope it means your experience with ED.gov becomes a more positive one.

Step 3: Rebuild

The future for ED.gov is beginning to take shape, but there is still a lot of work to be done. The cleanup activities we start this week are simply the first major milestone on this path toward the goal of rebuilding ED.gov. We appreciate your patience as the work continues on!

Posts you may also like

• Announcing the 8th Annual ED Games Expo: June 1 to 5, 2021
• A Letter to America’s Teachers
• Weeks Become Months: Teaching During a Pandemic

Moving Forward with a New ED.gov - ED.gov Blog

Historian: Segregation Persists Because Whites Opposed Any and All Efforts to Advance Desegregation | Diane Ravitch's blog

Historian: Segregation Persists Because Whites Opposed Any and All Efforts to Advance Desegregation | Diane Ravitch's blog

Historian: Segregation Persists Because Whites Opposed Any and All Efforts to Advance Desegregation

Today’s is the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. Much has changed. Barack Obama was elected President twice. But much has not changed. The desegregation of schools that once seemed inevitable stalled, inhibited by white flight from urban districts and housing desegregation.

Historian Matthew D. Lassiter of the University of Michigan argues in this opinion piece in the Washington Post that desegregation failed because of white resistance and pusillanimous federal courts, which turned against desegregation as Republican presidents added conservative justices to the Supreme Court.

Fifty years ago today, the Supreme Court issued the landmark decision of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the most far-reaching school desegregation case since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The Swann ruling upheld a lower court-imposed plan to integrate the public schools of metropolitan Charlotte through two-way busing between the segregated White suburbs and the all-Black central city neighborhoods.

During the next few years, busing helped transform the CONTINUE READING: Historian: Segregation Persists Because Whites Opposed Any and All Efforts to Advance Desegregation | Diane Ravitch's blog

Why is “Critical Race Theory” Controversial and What Is it? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Why is “Critical Race Theory” Controversial and What Is it? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Why is “Critical Race Theory” Controversial and What Is it?

In several states, the Governor and Legislature have denounced “critical race theory” and even (in Idaho and some other states) banned it from their schools. The controversy over teaching about race gained ground when former President Trump condemned CRT as divisive and launched his own quickie commission to teach “patriotic” education. The object seems to be to minimize or eliminate teaching about racism, past or present.

Retired teacher Nancy Flanagan dissected the controversy here, in one of the best-informed analyses.

It seems that the white adults want children to think of their country as one without faults, flaws, blemishes, or systematic oppression. To see our history whole, the good and the bad, they think, will undermine love of country.

The National Education Policy Center published a useful overview of the controversy and concluded that teaching CONTINUE READING: Why is “Critical Race Theory” Controversial and What Is it? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Tom: "Bewilderment is the True Comprehension"

Teacher Tom: "Bewilderment is the True Comprehension"

"Bewilderment is the True Comprehension"

I was waiting at the crosswalk. Across the street was a building of windows. Behind me was a future building of windows, yet another downtown residential tower under construction. I could see a multitude of reflections of the building behind me in the windows of the building across from me. Then, in a flash, I was bewildered as it seemed that the building I was looking at, or its windows, or something strange inside of it, began to, it seemed, undulate or vibrate or wiggle. 

Was the building falling? Shaking? Were we having an earthquake that I somehow couldn't feel, but only see? Was some magic afoot?

My confusion ended in a moment as I realized I was seeing a construction elevator ascending in those reflections across the street, it's image flashing first in one set of window panes, then another, as it rose. The moment of disorientation had lasted but a second, and now, on the other side of perplexity, I'd created comprehension.

I don't remember a time when I didn't, at least intuitively, CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: "Bewilderment is the True Comprehension"

Russ on Reading: Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 3: Building Bridges with Colleagues

Russ on Reading: Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 3: Building Bridges with Colleagues

Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 3: Building Bridges with Colleagues

Over the past month I have been exploring the Science of Reading (SOR) narrative that has dominated discussion about reading instruction for the last few years in posts here, here, and here. What I have argued is that the SOR narrative is far too narrow a conceptualization of reading instruction and that making it the dominant mode of instruction is dangerous. The prior posts back up that argument with relevant and recent research. Some readers, while sympathetic to my overall message, have complained that my language in these blogs is confrontational and likely to cut off conversation rather than build bridges. 

I admit that I have used words like "defeat", "fight", "overturn", and "combat", in discussing how we must respond to the SOR narrative. That is because this narrative is being foist upon school leaders, teachers, and children through lobbying groups, state legislatures, and school boards that have bought into this narrow view of reading instruction. My language is CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 3: Building Bridges with Colleagues

Secretary Cardona Begins to Correct DeVos’s College Loan Policies that Undermined Vulnerable College Students’ Access to Education | janresseger

Secretary Cardona Begins to Correct DeVos’s College Loan Policies that Undermined Vulnerable College Students’ Access to Education | janresseger

Secretary Cardona Begins to Correct DeVos’s College Loan Policies that Undermined Vulnerable College Students’ Access to Education

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has begun repairing some of the injustice of Betsy DeVos’s policies in the federal college loan program administered by the U.S. Department of Education.

In an extremely significant first step, two weeks ago, Cardona replaced Mark A Brown, who had been appointed by Betsy DeVos in 2019 to oversee the Department’s enormous student loan program. Brown is known to have favored the interests of the for-profit colleges that depend for their existence on tuition derived from student loans. As Brown’s replacement, Cardona has appointed Richard Cordray, a dogged advocate for the students and military veterans who have been preyed upon by for-profit colleges.

The Washington Post‘s Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reports: “Education Secretary Miguel Carrdona… named Richard Cordray, the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to head the federal office that oversees the government’s $1.5 trillion student loan portfolio. Cordray led the bureau’s crackdown on consumer abuses in debt collection, student loan servicing, and for-profit colleges, garnering the respect of advocates and drawing the ire of those industries. His selection signals tougher oversight of the Education Department’s contractors and enforcement of the rules governing federal student aid… During his six-year tenure at the CFPB, which he joined in 2011, Cordray frequently clashed with the financial industry and conservatives over his aggressive regulation. His efforts to weed out poor servicing of student loans and predatory career training schools at times put him at odds with the Education Department… The CFPB under Cordray’s direction brought some of the most high-profile student lending cases in recent years. Among them: a lawsuit against the now-defunct for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges for steering students into private loans that had interest rates as high as 15 percent.”

In a piece for The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner summarizes some of the outrageous CONTINUE READING: Secretary Cardona Begins to Correct DeVos’s College Loan Policies that Undermined Vulnerable College Students’ Access to Education | janresseger

CURMUDGUCATION: Covid and the Good Guys

CURMUDGUCATION: Covid and the Good Guys

Covid and the Good Guys

You can set this Twitter comment next to a quote from Rep. Virginia Foxx, who said that Weingarten "is attempting to rewrite history by framing her union as part of the 'solution.'"

Both are a fine example of how far off the rails the re-opening school debate has gone (if we can characterize a bunch of people hollering at each other a debate). Notice that the outpouring about Weingarten's call to re-open school buildings in the fall is not talking about whether that's a good idea or not. No, what we're now arguing about is who should get to call themselves a good guy. 

One of the narratives pushed and pushed hard for the last fifteen months has been the Narrative of the Evil Unions, who have somehow been behind the whole school closing thing even though many many parents have balked at sending students back and many private schools have stayed closed and it's not even particularly clear exactly how and where this union pressure has been exerted. Nor have I ever, ever understood what the villains' motivation was supposed to be in this story--if teachers are intent on shutting down schools, why is that, exactly? But anyway-- the Narrative of the Evil Unions has never flagged, and people who are invested in it will be damned if they're going to see the unions wiggle CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Covid and the Good Guys

Bill Gates acknowledges an affair with an employee, which Microsoft investigated - The Washington Post

Bill Gates acknowledges an affair with an employee, which Microsoft investigated - The Washington Post

Bill Gates acknowledges an affair with an employee, which Microsoft investigated

The confirmation of the affair and investigation comes two weeks after Gates and Melinda French Gates announced plans to divorce

SEATTLE — Bill Gates acknowledged through a spokeswoman that he had an extramarital affair with a Microsoft employee, which Microsoft said led its board to investigate the “intimate relationship” shortly before he resigned from the board last year.

It is not clear what role the investigation or the affair, which took place two decades ago, played in the decision the Microsoft co-founder and his wife, Melinda French Gates, made to divorce after 27 years of marriage. When they announced their divorce earlier this month, the couple posted identical and simultaneous tweets saying that “after a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage.”

In a divorce filing that day, French Gates called the marriage “irretrievably broken.”

“There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably,” Gates’s spokeswoman, Bridgitt Arnold, said in an emailed statement.

French Gates’s divorce lawyer, Robert Cohen, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Members of Microsoft’s board in 2019 looked into a Microsoft engineer’s allegations that she had a sexual relationship with Gates, according to Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw.

“Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000,” Shaw said in an emailed statement. “A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation. Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern.” CONTINUE READING: Bill Gates acknowledges an affair with an employee, which Microsoft investigated - The Washington Post

Education Matters: Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran says he had teacher, Amy Donofrio fired

Education Matters: Education Commisioner Richard Corcoran says he had teacher, Amy Donofrio fired

Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran says he had teacher, Amy Donofrio fired

More incredible work from Accountabalony:

but I didn’t think to say “okay and keep all of the crazy liberal stuff out” and so now we literally have them, and they hide it in “social emotional learning” so it doesn’t SAY “Critical Race Theory” but you could definitely have a teacher who teaches Critical Race Theory so now we have to go back and say, if it’s electronic, we want it out and, on top of that, we’re passing a rule this coming month that says, for the 185,000 teachers, you can’t indoctrinate students with stuff that’s not based on our standards, the new B.E.S.T. standards…

But you have to police it on a daily basis, it’s 185,000 teachers in a classroom with anywhere from 18-25 kids and it you’re not physically there in the classroom. I will tell you it’s working in the universities and it’s starting to work in… I’ve censored or fired or terminated numerous teachers for doing that. I’m getting sued right now in Duval County … because it was an entire classroom memorialized to Black Lives Matter… we made sure she was terminated and now we’re being sued by every one of the liberal left groups for “freedom of speech” issues and I say to them …

https://accountabaloney.com/index.php/2021/05/16/the-war-will-be-won-in-education/?fbclid=IwAR29qet_44RnTlB54YL9dHRqvf-vkNC63DNcJhw9KfCm7Qac8KabweW95E4

We made sure she was fired. Where does Corcoran end and Greene begin?

If you read the piece you will realize he has no idea what Donofrio teaches or what grade for that matter, but he took great joy in saying he had her fired. 

Look you have to read the entire piece and then listen to the video.

More on this later.

Education Matters: Education Commisioner Richard Corcoran says he had teacher, Amy Donofrio fired

A VERY BUSY DAY Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007 #tBATs

 Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

A VERY BUSY DAY

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The latest news and resources in education since 2007

THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The latest news and resources in education since 2007 -

http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2021/05/this-week-in-education-larry-ferlazzos_15.html

Unsurprising Statistic Of The Day: Teachers Are Feeling Stressed This Year

by Larry Ferlazzo / 2h

In what may be the most unsurprising poll result anyway, Education Week has found that Teachers Are More Stressed Out Than Ever, Even Amid Promising Developments, Survey Shows . I’m not sure where those eight percent who said they weren’t more stressed are teaching, but it’s unlikely to be in this universe. I love teaching. And, though I’m doing my best (and think I’m succeeding) in not communica

Three New Resources To Support Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Here are three new additions to The Best Sites For Asian Pacific American Heritage Month : Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders share their stories of racism and discrimination and how they’ve stood up. is from NBC News. Classroom Resources on AAPI History and Contemporary Life is from Facing History. Asian Pacific American History is from The Smithsonian.

Monday’s Must-Read Articles On School Reopenings – Masks In Schools Edition

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING (& SHOWING) WHAT SCHOOLS LOOK LIKE DURING THE PANDEMIC (you might also be interested in SCHOOLS WENT REMOTE A YEAR AGO – HERE ARE MY CHOICES FOR THE BEST PIECES WRITTEN ABOUT SCHOOL REOPENING SINCE THEN): Schools in the U.S. should continue to use masks, C.D.C. advises. is from The NY Times. CDC clarifies mask guidance for schools is from The Hi

This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in THE BEST ARTICLES, VIDEOS & POSTS ON EDUCATION POLICY IN 2019 – PART TWO ): The Fight for Ethnic Studies is from Learning For Justice. I’m adding it to The Best Posts On The Value Of Ethnic Studies Classes – Help Me Find More . The biggest impact of the Gates divorce may have nothing to do

Monday Is The 67th Anniversary Of Brown vs. Board Of Education – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

Monday is the 67th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. You might be interested in: The Best Commentaries On The 60th Anniversary Of Brown vs. Board Of Education Linda Brown, Of Brown vs. Board Of Education Case, Dies – Here Are Resources About Her Life The Best Resources For Learning About School Desegregation (& Segregation) – Help Me Find More The Best Resources For Learni

‘Students Will Ask Great Questions If We Give Them the Chance’

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

is my latest Education Week column. Four educators share ideas for encouraging students to develop questions, including through project-based learning. Here are some excerpts:

Video Series From The Wall Street Journal: “WSJ Explainers”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay WSJ Explainers are short and relatively accessible videos on current events. You can find them all here . I’m adding it to The Best Online “Explainer” Tools For Current Events. Here’s their latest one, on the Chinese Mars probe:

Saturday’s Must-Read Articles On School Reopenings

by Larry Ferlazzo / 2d

geralt / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING (& SHOWING) WHAT SCHOOLS LOOK LIKE DURING THE PANDEMIC (you might also be interested in SCHOOLS WENT REMOTE A YEAR AGO –

 Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007