Adora Svitak started writing at age five and hasn’t stopped since. Now 12 years old, she has published three books (Flying Fingers, Dancing Fingers, and Yang in Disguise), writes her own blog, and teaches other students by doing school visits and using online distance learning.

Adora is a rare literary prodigy who has a lot to show us about why we should value reading and books. You can learn more about her at her blog and her website.

The education documentary Waiting for Superman has been making waves the past few months as bloggers and movie critics post their reviews from film festival screenings around the country. One such blogger, Latoya Peterson, was deeply moved by what she saw.

“Watching this film is kind of like bleeding from thousands of paper cuts.  Guggenheim introduces each child and their back story, and uses their experiences to illuminate different aspects of our failing educational system.  The stories cross race, region, class, and ethnicity to produce a heartbreaking tapestry.  Each of these children are so bright, full of life…and dangling on the precipice of educational reform.”

Latoya raised another important issue that is only tangentially addressed by the film: parent involvement’s effect on student outcomes. Increasingly, research shows students whose parents are actively involved in their child’s education will do significantly better.

This same research shows that an achievement gap exists not just between low-income minority students and middle-to-upper class students. Even middle class students whose parents are uninvolved in their schooling can do poorly and even drop out.

In one case, after seeing her district’s low test scores, a mom gathered other parents to create a tutoring group for their students. She saw her daughter’s test scores rise shortly thereafter.

Waiting for Superman asks us to confront why our schools are failing. What are ways we can take the next step and ensure parents support their children’s education from home?

Here’s the latest from the Let’s Read. Let’s Move. initiative. Last Thursday, U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan joined Marian Robinson, mother of First Lady Michelle Obama, to read with local students from the Columbia Heights Youth Club’s Reading is Fundamental program, the Alexandria Happy Home Child Learning Center and the D.C. Bilingual Public Charter School.

Let’s Read. Let’s Move. is a summer enrichment series to help guide America’s youth to build fit bodies and strong minds. Learn more here.

A new video infographic from GOOD Magazine and Chris Weller takes a broad look at the state of education in America today. Compared to many other first world countries, we’re falling rapidly and dangerously behind.

As technology becomes more and more instrumental in the classroom and beyond, how can we prevent America’s achievement gaps from widening? Today, computers are the new pen and paper.

Per Scholas, a nonprofit in New York City founded in 2002, aims to give low-income communities access to technology. The organization takes end-of-life computers from companies, wipes them clean of old data, refurbishes them, and then redistributes them to schools.

From GOOD:

To date, [Per Scholas has] partnered with six public middle schools to distribute over 2,000 computers to students and teachers and provided hundreds of hours of technology training. The result: Students are not only empowered to achieve in school, but also gain computer skills that will help them for the rest of their lives.

This new video from a conversation at Penn State offers a lot of wisdom from one of the key figures of education innovation, Sir Ken Robinson. In this conversation, Robinson expands on the ideas he introduced in his 2006 TED Talk, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”

According to Robinson, the school system works with the assumption that life is linear; which, as he points out, is almost never the case.

Below, watch Sir Ken Robinson’s original viral video from TED 2006:

Awesome Book Tour from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.

Dallas Clayton had a small idea: he wanted to write a book for his son to encourage him to dream and dream often. He decided to print a few copies to share, and An Awesome Book took off, selling out after each pressing. Check out the video above to learn Dallas’s story.

After receiving letters from around the globe, Dallas decided to give back to the children and communities who love his book and love to read. He embarked on a tour across the country and has set a goal of selling 100,000 books and donating another 100,000 – one book donated for each book sold. So far, he is halfway towards reaching this incredible goal.

We e-mailed Dallas to ask him about his work with the Awesome World Foundation and his popular book. Here are his responses:

Where are you currently at on your tour?

Just got back from a 10 day stint: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nevada, Eugene, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Idaho, Montana, Salt Lake City, Nevada, Southern California. Such an amazing tour! I’m going to rest a bit and do some Cali readings throughout the summer, then plan on hitting the road again probably in September.

What would you like to see happen in the schools to which you donate your book?

I would like to see the kids all grow up to eradicate diseases, poverty, famine, win major sporting events, make me laugh and cry in amazing ways, and generally change the world for the better. But more to the point, I would be happy if I just made a lot of kids excited about reading and thinking outside the box.

Personally, how have you seen this benefit children and education as a whole?

Well it’s tough to say because the foundation isn’t even a year old yet but I would say my goal is twofold: one to give away books, more specifically An Awesome Book which I love very much and think is important; two, to stop in and read with kids, put books in their hands, talk to them and let them know the human side of creating something and show them how attainable your goals can be if you really put your mind to it. As far as those goals go, I’ve seen the benefit 1000 times over. So many kids so excited, parents, teachers, strangers on the street, just people all over the world made happier (if even for an instant) by what I’ve created. Victory!

Have you read An Awesome Book yet? Check out the website for the Awesome World Foundation and see it for yourself.  You can even read the book online, but don’t let that stop you from buying one, considering Dallas gives a book away for everyone one he sells.

Budget cuts, teacher layoffs, and furloughs are part and parcel in school districts across the country during a recession. Many schools are looking for creative, non-traditional ways to keep their teachers and maintain services for students in the current economic environment. In one case, schools in Los Angeles are taking advantage of their proximity to Hollywood by opening up their campuses to TV and movie producers for a fee.

Some LA schools are bending over backwards to market themselves because schools receive a significant amount of money for accommodating film crews. From the AP, via USAToday:

“School officials who permit movie shoots say it nets them big bucks. They get paid location fees ranging from Los Angeles Unified’s $3,100 per day to Torrance’s $5,500, plus sundries such as cleanup.

With more schools signing up for filming and ramped up promotion through FilmLA, Los Angeles Unified has earned the most it’s ever made from filming this school year — $1.5 million from last July through March.”

The extra cash comes at a time when schools are being hit from all sides by reduced funding and students who need education more than ever to find a job in a weak economy with high unemployment. However, there remains the possibility that Hollywood’s demand for on-location shots may not stick around for the long-term. What will schools do when money from producers runs low?

Schools should have a consistent and dependable source of public funding to educate children and prepare them for the workforce. Hollywood’s investment in LA and Torrance schools is an excellent example of how a community can support education. How can we ensure that our schools continue to receive sufficient funding from both private and public funds, even during tough economic times?

Above, view a clip from The Atlantic featuring Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival 2010.

Why do we continue to pay teachers who can’t teach? Why do we let them come back year after year to “teach” our children? Here, Canada focuses on the flawed business model of the education system. In any other business, workers are hired and fired with strict regard to skill level and what they’re able to contribute to the company. But in almost all public schools, the practice of tenure is in place, allowing teachers to keep their jobs regardless of how well they perform. Watch the clip to hear how Canada proposes to reform the model.

From the official TED website:

Charles Leadbeater went looking for radical new forms of education — and found them in the slums of Rio and Kibera, where some of the world’s poorest kids are finding transformative new ways to learn. And this informal, disruptive new kind of school, he says, is what all schools need to become.

(TED is an annual conference on innovative thinking, focusing on Technology, Entertainment, and Design.)