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Mark Siegel

Mark Siegel is assistant head at Delphian School in Sheridan, Ore., where he’s been since 1974. He has headed the Oregon Federation of Independent Schools since 1988 and served 25 years on the board of the Council for American Private Education. He's served on Oregon Department of Education task forces and helps public and private schools transition to proficiency-based student-centered models. He travels the country advocating for private education and for proficiency-based education, urging the shift from factory-model schools to more personalized, student-centered programs.

Students are going to use their cellphones one way or another, and trying to ban them precludes their potential usefulness as PRTs — portable research tools — that can enrich lessons and engage students in novel ways.
A new generation of AI-enabled classroom tools might help teachers and students move beyond the old “factory model” of education, which teaches all students at the same pace, to a more personalized model.
A new world of problem-solving tech companies is fast emerging in our time, and today's students have a lot to gain by venturing out of the classroom, whether by field trip or Zoom tour, to see it for themselves.
In the scramble to solve looming challenges in education regarding broadband, online learning, artificial intelligence or any number of new technologies, it’s easy to overlook astonishing improvements.
K-12 schools have long relied on homework, and in some cases competition between students, to prompt the hard work of learning and processing information. But it’s possible these tactics do more harm than good.
With U.S. schools recording their largest-ever drop in math scores and struggling students falling farther behind, the nation's education leaders should be looking for new ways to raise student proficiency.
Artificial intelligence creates new ethical challenges as quickly as it does opportunities in the education space. The movement for competency-based education could use the same urgency and innovation.
With emerging, data-driven approaches to instruction and mounting evidence of learning loss during the pandemic, K-12 schools should question the wisdom of putting all students through the same classes at the same pace.
With an ever-expanding list of technology tools being implemented in classrooms, school IT departments may face growing demands for tech support, but certain best practices and resources can ease the burden.
The concept of a “portrait of a graduate” begs the question, what kind of citizens do we want coming out of the K-12 pipeline? The answer should guide decisions going forward and be an ongoing community conversation.