Innovative Ideas

5th Grade Student From Ammon Creates Community Garden to Feed Hungry Families

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Sidonah Colvin is on a mission to help feed hungry families in her community. She’s doing this by working with the mayor and other city officials of Ammon, Idaho, to create a community garden, and she’s doing it in the midst of a global pandemic. Sidonah’s project started at school – Alturas International Academy in Idaho Falls. Alturas is an…

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5 Things We Learned from Idaho Charter School Leaders as Their Students Switch to Online Learning — and 2 Thoughts for the Future

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by Kristen McCarver and Josh McCarty As the need to transition to remote learning grew more apparent, many of Idaho’s charter school leaders began to plan their transition from their current teaching methods to remote options. We brought these schools together virtually to talk about how they are working to serve their families, children and communities during the COVID-19 shutdown,…

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Rural Charter School Offers New CTE Opportunities for Students in Salmon, Idaho

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by Kristen McCarver “Thank you so much for doing this, it’s the first time he’s shown interest in something other than hunting,” said one parent of the new 6-week welding class offered by Fernwaters Public Charter School. Prior to this program, few 7th and 8th grade students in rural Salmon, Idaho were able to engage in career exploration. Salmon is…

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A Step Toward Strengthening Idaho’s Career-Techincal Education Programs

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At Bluum, we aim to help Idaho’s children reach their fullest potential by cultivating great leaders and growing innovative schools. Through our experience of helping to open or expand high-performing schools throughout the state, we have learned some lessons about quality, leadership, and innovation. Recent research we’ve sponsored once again highlights the earnings gap between college graduates and those who…

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Meeting the Potential of a Virtual Education

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Lessons From Operators Making Online Schooling Work When the first virtual school began more than 20 years ago, it offered an incredible promise: Suddenly, students could get access to a great education and a diversity of courses regardless of place or time. They could have flexibility to “attend” school around medical appointments, sports practices, or whatever else life threw at…

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education fellowship opportunities

75 Education Organizations Seek to Address Teacher Diversity

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Research has shown that teacher diversity helps close the achievement gap for students of color, and improves educational outcomes for all students. Bluum is joining seventy-five education organizations—representing teachers, preservice teachers, school counselors, education staff, principals, superintendents, charter school leaders, education reformers, tutors, and teacher educators—signing a letter, organized by the Association of American Educators Foundation, calling for action to address…

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Little Audience, Big Ideas: Idaho New School Fellow creates STEAM Learning Opportunities

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Libraries are generally known to be quiet places, but on Early Childhood STEAM Day, when you step through the doors at Caldwell Public Library, an enthusiastic murmur can be heard somewhere to the left. Idaho New School Fellow Anthony Haskett regularly teams up with the Caldwell Public Library to harness the excitement and energy of 30 preschoolers into free STEAM activities. This…

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education fellowship opportunities

A Tested Tool to Better Serve Idaho Students – Flexibility in Charter School Leadership

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At Bluum, we aim to help Idaho’s children reach their fullest potential by cultivating great leaders and growing innovative schools. Through our experience of helping to open or expand 15 high-performing schools throughout the state, and empowering six outstanding educators to design, build, and launch high-performing public charter schools, we have learned some lessons about quality, leadership, and innovation. This…

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How Is Idaho Charter School Performance Like a Clint Eastwood Movie? There’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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by Terry Ryan This opinion piece appeared in The 74 on 2/4/19 The Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, just released its study of public charter schools in Idaho. The report analyzes student performance using three years of data, beginning with 2014-15 school year and ending with 2016-17. The findings made me think of the classic spaghetti western…

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Why School Choice Has Worked for Us

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by Sierra Tanner and Tanner Lynch, high school students at Pathways in Education – Nampa For decades, high school students like us have chosen some of their classes—electives, Advanced Placement courses, and so on—based on their talents, needs, and interests. If students can choose their own classes with advice from their parents, they should also have the power to select…

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