Chicago Public Schools is beginning to move on use of the iPad, bringing them into 20 schools this year. How the devices are picked up in the schools, and what trends of adoption and use emerge, will illustrate the potential and limitations of this new kind of technology in traditional schools. More and more as technologies advance learning models will need to be rethought to accommodate the capacity of technologies, instead of trying to fit new devices into existing schools and programs.

Laura Weeldreyer is deputy chief of staff for the Superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools. In this guest post, pushing against a recent report from the Fordham Foundation, Weeldreyer describes the reasoning behind that district’s move to create conditions inside the district that provide more autonomy to innovative schools and programs.

Against the tide of comprehensive reform asserts that problems do not arise themselves but are the result of conditions. Instead of trying to foresee all possible problems, and seeking to know all answers, wouldn’t it be more effective to create the best environment at the school level for self-improvement, and to productively identify and work on problems as they occur?

In this video Linda Peters, a lead teacher at the Advanced Language and Academic Studies (ALAS) bilingual high school in Milwaukee, describes how the school makes management and finance decisions by including teachers. ALAS has been able to function as a school run collectively by teachers because the Milwaukee school district and the local union agreed to grant the teachers autonomy and authority. The teachers saw the opportunity, and took it.