schoolinfosystem.org
Neerav Kingsland: In 44 cities charters serve over 20% of students. These 44 cities, as well as many others in the future, will have to evolve their educational systems to govern a mixed portfolio of school types. What options are available to these cities? Here’s five, some of which will be much better for children […]
Paul E. Peterson and Samuel Barrows: The Supreme Court, in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA), is now considering whether all teachers should be required to pay union-determined “agency fees” for collective bargaining services, whether or not the teacher wants them. When making their case, unions would have the public believe that school teachers stand […]
Elizabeth Raleigh and Grace Kao: In one of the first longitudinal population-based studies examining adopted children’s educational achievement, we analyze whether there is a test-score gap between children in adoptive families and children in biological families. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we find in aggregate adopted children have lower reading and math […]
Wang Lianzhang: With fewer than 90 days to go until primary school registration begins, migrant workers sent a letter earlier this month to the education bureau of Guangzhou, the capital of southern China’s Guangdong province, to request more places for their children in public schools. Migrant workers do not hold permanent residency in Guangzhou and […]
Lisa Speckhard: We can’t change too much too fast when we have one of the largest achievement gaps in the country,” said candidate Ali Muldrow, who faces Kate Toews in the race for Seat 6 on the board. “My children don’t have 10 years for us to improve … Notes and links on seat 6 […]
Mehul Srivastava: Bana has her mouth full, so I speak with Fatemah. She’s 27, and had been training to become a lawyer when the war came to Aleppo. I have to ask her how she feels about her child being used “as a tool for propaganda” — first for the anti-government forces and now by […]
Matthew Frankel, via a kind email: A short video that explains New Jersey’s “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher layoff law was released on social media today by Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), the nonprofit supporting six Newark parents and their pro bono legal team in a legal challenge to the constitutionality of this statute. […]
Michael Rosenwald: As millions of American families buy robotic voice assistants to turn off lights, order pizzas and fetch movie times, children are eagerly co-opting the gadgets to settle dinner table disputes, answer homework questions and entertain friends at sleepover parties. Many parents have been startled and intrigued by the way these disembodied, know-it-all voices […]
Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques, via a kind email: Dear Superintendent Cheatham and Members of the Madison School Board: We are writing as an update to our Public Appearance at the December 12 Board meeting. You may recall that at that meeting, we expressed serious concerns about how the District analyzes and shares student data. […]
Linda Lutton: The little kids are fourth graders. They go to William Penn Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side in the North Lawndale neighborhood. It’s the first day of school, September 2014, and they’re filing into the auditorium because Mayor Rahm Emanuel is here to tout rising test scores. The head of Chicago Public Schools […]
Chen Jongnan: Recently, while browsing Chinese social media, I was struck by the popularity of a new buzzword: “widowed parenting.” Contrary to what you might think, widowed parents are not those whose spouses have died. Instead, the term refers to families in which one parent bears far more responsibility for raising children than the other. […]
Reuters: China is considering introducing birth rewards and subsidies to encourage people to have a second child, after surveys showed that economic constraints were making many reluctant to expand families, the state-owned China Daily newspaper reported. The potential move was revealed by Wang Peian, vice-minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission at a […]
David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson: The structure of marriage and child-rearing in U.S. households has undergone two marked shifts in the last three decades: a steep decline in the prevalence of marriage among young adults, and a sharp rise in the fraction of children born to unmarried mothers or living in single-headed households. […]
The Economist: AT A school in the township of West Point, Monrovia, a teacher should be halfway through her maths lesson. Instead she is eating lunch. A din echoes around the room of the government-run school as 70 pupils chat, fidget or sleep on their desks. Neither these pupils nor the rest of Liberia is […]
Meg Jones: “Here’s my concern about the bully pulpit. If her position is ‘I’m going to Milwaukee and I’m going to go to taxpayer subsidized parochial or private schools that are part of the choice program,’ that’s great. But she also has to visit public schools. … “She better talk about both in a positive […]
David Denby necessary commonplace: Almost everyone we know has been turned around, or at least seriously shaken, by a teacher—in college, maybe, but often in high school, often by a man or a woman who drove home a point or two about physics, literature, or ethics, and looked at us sternly and said, in effect, […]
Peter Hotez: It’s looking as if 2017 could become the year when the anti-vaccination movement gains ascendancy in the United States and we begin to see a reversal of several decades in steady public health gains. The first blow will be measles outbreaks in America. Measles is one of the most contagious and most lethal […]
Ariel Ezrachi & Maurice Stucke: We are witnessing the growth of online markets and a change in our purchasing patterns. People are opting for the convenience of online shopping. Advances in technology have seemingly increased our choices and opened markets to competition. We get more of what we desire at better prices and lower quality. […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: Today, One City Early Learning Centers of Madison and Edgewood College’s School of Education announced a new partnership they have formed to provide preschool teachers-in-training with significant hands-on experience in early childhood education in a community setting. Beginning this month, Edgewood College will teach its Pre-student Teaching Practicum Course, […]
Thomas Edsall While the polarized belief systems that exploded in the battle between Trump and Clinton are driving both policymaking and an invigorated opposition, researchers continue to provide empirical evidence on the difficult issues of race, poverty and intergenerational mobility. Rucker C. Johnson, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, has […]
Thomas Sowell: An opportunity has arisen — belatedly — that may not come again in this generation. That is an opportunity to greatly expand the kinds of schools that have successfully educated, to a high level, inner-city youngsters whom the great bulk of public schools fail to educate to even minimally adequate levels. What may […]
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Much more on the candidates, here: Seat 6 and Seat 7. Nostalgic visitors might find past school board election links and videos of interest. I’m glad that we’re blessed with choice. I’m also glad that several candidates mentioned our abundance of resources (we spend far more than […]
Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via email: On January 27th, the Leadership Group on School Staffing Challenges, convened by DPI Superintendent Tony Evers and Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators (WASDA) Executive Director Jon Bales, issued its Full Summary of Preliminary Licensing Recommendations. Together with earlier recommendations from the State Superintendent’s Working Group on School Staffing Issues […]
Jennifer Cheatham: With a contested race for state superintendent of public instruction and a legislative session that is swinging into gear, much is at stake for public education in Wisconsin. One of the fundamental issues at the center of the debate is the potential expansion of “school choice,” which is the term used to describe […]
Leslie Nguyen-Okwu: From Siri handling our schedules to smart cars driving themselves, artificial intelligence (AI) has turned our world upside down — except in education. Computers are trading on the stock markets for us, but our schools might as well be stuck in the 12th century. Children sit in the same orderly rows they have […]
Alan Borsuk: In what ways are parents the answer and in what ways are parents the problem? I’m talking about the role parents do or could play in getting (or impeding) better schooling outcomes for children, especially kids who are most likely to end up at the sad end of all those achievement gaps. My […]
Tony Evers (PDF): 1. Why are you running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction? I’ve been an educator all my adult life. I grew up in small town Plymouth, WI. Worked at a canning factory in high school, put myself through college, and married my kindergarten sweetheart, Kathy-also a teacher. I taught and became a […]
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, via Gary Bennett: The University interprets its responsibility to authorize charter schools as a part of a larger attempt to improve education for children and in this instance, the education of children in the City. Charter schools must have programs that provide quality education to urban students and address the critical issues […]
Martin Paul Whitely And Suzanne Robinson New research has found the youngest children in West Australian primary school classes are twice as likely as their oldest classmates to receive medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Published in the Medical Journal of Australia, the research analysed data for 311,384 WA schoolchildren, of whom 5,937 received […]
James Wigderson: State Superintendent of Public Instruction candidate John Humphries has unveiled a plan that would allow parents whose children attend the lowest-performing schools to decide what kind of changes they want to make. “We’ve created a proposal system where we identify the lowest performing 5 percent of low-income schools,” Humphries told a group of […]
Neil Buckley and Evon Huber: Since Ewa Korulska launched Startowa middle school as director in 2007 she has wanted it to be a model for Polish education. Now the school in a Warsaw suburb could be swept away as planned educational reforms bring cultural battles between Poland’s conservative government and its critics to the nation’s […]
“The existing K-12 school system (including most charters and private schools) has been transformed into a knowledge-free zone…Surveys conducted by NAEP and other testing agencies reveal an astonishing lack of historical and civic knowledge…Fifty-two percent chose Germany, Japan, or Italy as “U.S. Allies” in World War II.” Sol Stern, via Will Fitzhugh: President-elect Donald Trump’s […]
Alia Wong: When President Jimmy Carter assumed office in 1977, he did something remarkable: He enrolled his 9-year-old daughter, Amy, in a predominantly black Washington, D.C., public school. The move was symbolic, a commitment the Democrat from Georgia had made even before securing the presidency. In his presidential-nomination acceptance speech the previous year, Carter criticized […]
Nichelle Nichols (PDF): As a reminder, in August we shared that our Resource Coordinators were busily engaging in the early work of Community School implementation, which included (1) forming and beginning meetings with the newly formed Community Schools Committee, (2) compiling existing data about needs in the neighborhood, and (3) working with community partners to […]
5.7MB PDF: We submit this proposal to open MMSD’s first AMI Montessori school. Isthmus Montessori Academy, Inc. was founded in the goal of providing expanded access to Montessori as a brain-based scientifically developed method of education. We are inspired by MMSD’s direction and leadership, and are excited and prepared to join the district in providing […]
AP: Baby Boomers: your millennial children are worse off than you. With a median household income of $40,581, millennials earn 20 percent less than boomers did at the same stage of life, despite being better educated, according to a new analysis of Federal Reserve data by the advocacy group Young Invincibles. The analysis being released […]
Francis Thompson: My wife and I had 12 children over the course of 15 1/2 years. Today, our oldest is 37 and our youngest is 22. I have always had a very prosperous job and enough money to give my kids almost anything. But my wife and I decided not to. I will share with […]
Mitt Romney: Second, it’s important to have someone who will challenge the conventional wisdom and the status quo. In 1970, it cost $56,903 to educate a child from K-12. By 2010, adjusting for inflation, we had raised that spending to $164,426 — almost three times as much. Further, the number of people employed in our […]
Erin Richards: Together, Travis Academy and Holy Redeemer have received close to $100 million in taxpayer funding over the years. The sum is less than what taxpayers would have paid for those pupils in public schools, because each tuition voucher costs less than the total expense per pupil in Milwaukee Public Schools. But vouchers weren’t […]
Jim Schutze: When do we start calling the anti-accountability lobby in public education by its true name — the mediocrity lobby? When do we begin to talk about the fact that poor and minority children are not held down half so much by mean rich people as by glad-handing mediocrats who earn their livings off […]
M.B. Pell and Joshua Schneyer On a sunny November afternoon in this historic city, birthplace of the Pony Express and death spot of Jesse James, Lauranda Mignery watched her son Kadin, 2, dig in their front yard. As he played, she scolded him for putting his fingers in his mouth. In explanation, she pointed to […]
Josh Mitchell In the year through September 2015, about 114,000 Americans age 50 and older had their Social Security benefits reduced to offset defaulted student loans. That figure—which includes 38,000 people age 65 or older—has risen 440% since 2002. The report highlights the growing number of baby boomers who are entering retirement with student debt, […]
Rahm Emanuel: Fight the toughest battle: The toughest nut for urban school districts to crack is high school, but again, investing in quality is the key. While we have backed quality charter options in Chicago, we have also invested in quality through magnet, military, IB and STEM schools to the point that 50 percent of […]
Renee Dudley Finishing the redesign quickly was essential. If the overhaul were ready by March 2015, he wrote in a later email to senior employees, then the New York-based College Board could win new business and counter the most popular college entrance exam in America, the ACT. Perhaps the biggest change was the new test’s […]
The Economist: But Estonia has also taken a deliberately inclusive approach, argues Mart Laidmets, a senior official at its ministry of education. It tries to avoid at all costs having pupils repeat years of school. Holding pupils back can help. But too often it is used as an excuse not to teach difficult kids. It […]
Kim Schroeder (President of the Milwaukee Teacher Union: Critics may say that not all charter schools are bad, which may be true. But only a small percentage of private charters outperform traditional public schools. And private schools serve fewer English-language learners and children with special needs; expel a disproportionate number of minority students; and, even […]
website: Children’s prospects of achieving the “American Dream” of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century. This decline has occurred throughout the parental income distribution, for children from both low and high income families, as shown in the chart below. Jim Tankersley has more.
Amanda Ripley Here’s what the models show: Generally speaking, the smartest countries tend to be those that have acted to make teaching more prestigious and selective; directed more resources to their neediest children; enrolled most children in high-quality preschools; helped schools establish cultures of constant improvement; and applied rigorous, consistent standards across all classrooms. Of […]
Stephen Henderson: In Brightmoor, the only high school left is Detroit Community Schools, a charter boasting more than a decade of abysmal test scores and, until recently, a superintendent who earned $130,000 a year despite a dearth of educational experience or credentials. On the west side, another charter school, Hope Academy, has been serving the […]
Alan Borsuk: We already have hefty private school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Racine and a growing voucher scene in the rest of the state, plus a new special-education voucher program, and a convoluted but fairly lively charter school scene, particularly in Milwaukee. What more could be done? It’s a time when school choice insiders […]
Madison School District Administration (PDF): 1. In total, MMSD has 365 open enrollment enterers and 1294 open enrollment leavers for 2016-17; among those 1294 leavers, 58% have never enrolled in an MMSD school. 2. The net effect of open enrollment decreased by 70 students. The number of open enrollment leavers decreased by 21 students and […]
Kate Zernike It is hard to find anyone more passionate about the idea of steering public dollars away from traditional public schools than Betsy DeVos, Donald J. Trump’s pick as the cabinet secretary overseeing the nation’s education system. For nearly 30 years, as a philanthropist, activist and Republican fund-raiser, she has pushed to give families […]
Jerry pournelle The first is worth considering, but I would suggest it should be considered by the states, not the Federal Government, which ought to abandon the notion of telling the states how to educate their children. Wise states would then delegate that responsibility to local schools and locally elected school boards. Most would not […]
Eugene Volokh: I think having more legal immigration to America is important to continued American greatness. (I say this as an immigrant myself, but I think non-immigrants have reason to take the same view.) But if immigration means reduction in our rights as Americans — the right to fly American flags, whether as a sign […]
Anna Diamond: On Thursday in South Korea, hundreds of thousands of high-school seniors sat down to take the Suneung, or the College Scholastic Ability Test. As students walked to the exam centers, well-wishers handed out “yut”—a type of taffy and a sign of good luck, so that test-takers would “stick” to the university they want. […]
Mark Lilla: But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life. At a very young age our children are being encouraged […]
Molly Beck: John Matthews, former longtime executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., called Evers a “hero” and said he deserves to be re-elected. He said Wisconsin “residents know of his advocacy for their children.” “That said, I do worry that the far right and the corporations which want to privatize our public schools and make […]
Lenore Skenazy I guess if kids want to read, they’ve got their phones. So a local mom wrote to me: A program my son used to go to as dropoff now requires a parent to be with him. And definitely, in our town, the library is mostly for the preschool set. Don’t they realize that […]
Jonathan Kozol: IT’S NOT EASY to compete with buckets of money pouring into Massachusetts to convince the public to lift the cap on charter schools but, as a former teacher who has worked for more than 50 years with children in the nation’s schools, here’s my entry into the debate. 1. Some charter schools do […]
Alan Borsuk: Keep this phrase in mind: Education savings accounts. It may not be occurring at your kitchen table, but at some tables, people are talking about the future of school choice programs in Wisconsin. And these are, in many cases, important people — thought leaders and political leaders among Republicans and conservatives — who […]
Wall Street Journal: Tech giants like Google and Facebook always deny that their platforms favor some viewpoints over others, but then they don’t do much to avoid looking censorious. This week a conservative radio host and author is wondering why YouTube classifies his educational web clips as “potentially objectionable” material. Dennis Prager’s “PragerU” puts out […]
Linda Liukas: I believe stories are the most formative force of our childhood. The stories we read growing up affect the way we perceive the world as we grow up. For some reason narratives haven’t been used as part of technology education, even though a lot of research suggests that stories are the best way […]
Daniel Boffey: Boys might claim it’s a simple matter of preferring to read magazines or the latest musings of their friends on social media rather than the classics. But two of the largest studies ever conducted into the reading habits of children in the UK have put those excuses to bed. Boys, of every age, […]
Kristen Graham Estelle B. Richman believes teachers – especially those in struggling neighborhoods – need ample resources, and that parents ought to have choices about where their children attend school. The public servant who was once a licensed school psychologist is well aware of the challenges the School Reform Commission faces. And, she said, she’s […]
Laura Waters: Allow me to take a wild guess: New Jersey’s newly-anointed next governor Phil Murphy has never stepped foot in a charter school. Yet on Saturday, he, along with the rest of the NAACP National Board, will vote to call for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools. Now allow me a wish: […]
Bob Kerrey: Few if any candidates for federal office will tell you that as a consequence of current federal law, young Americans are being screwed in two life-changing ways. First, under current law, every Social Security beneficiary under the age of 48 will have their promised benefits cut by a third. And second, every young […]
Kevin Hartnett: If we could snap our fingers and change the way math and science are taught in U.S. schools, most of us would. The shortcomings of the current approach are clear. Subjects that are vibrant in the minds of experts become lifeless by the time they’re handed down to students. It’s not uncommon to […]
EDWIN RIOS AND KRISTINA RIZGA In late July, the NAACP called for a national moratorium on charter schools, claiming they target low-income and minority communities with practices mirroring the predatory subprime mortgage lending industry. Now a group of more than 160 black civic leaders is asking the civil rights group to reconsider, arguing that charters […]
John Wisely A report finds the nation’s most segregated school district border sits between Detroit and the Grosse Pointes. Story Highlights Lawsuit is part of growing trend of litigation aimed at failing schools. Because it’s a federal case, it could reach the U.S. Supreme Court and have nationwide impact. Everyone knows that literacy is important, […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: On Sunday, October 2, 2016 from 2pm to 4pm CST, more than 130 local Black men will participate in Madison’s Premiere Black Male Photo Shoot on the steps of Wisconsin’s State Capitol, City Hall and the Monona Terrace. The photo shoot has been organized One City Early Learning Centers […]
Simon Keper: ‘A 10-year-old in western Europe is probably the safest demographic since man first walked upright, but try telling that to your brain’ I’d like to have a soldier stationed outside the classroom door,” my son’s teacher told the parents’ meeting. “And I’d like him to be young and handsome.” My children’s primary school […]
Sanya Manor: Unfolded laundry sits in a basket and dishes stack up in the sink at Dawn Cardenas’ home. “Things that are not important don’t get done,” said Cardenas, who teaches at O’Banion Middle School in Garland ISD. Instead, Cardenas, 54, devotes nearly all of her time to making sure her four grown children —three […]
Rich Lowry: The TV cable-news network MSNBC runs sermonettes from its anchors during commercial breaks. They are like public-service announcements illuminating the progressive mind, and perhaps none has ever been as revealing and remarkable as the one cut by weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry. Harris-Perry set out to explain what is, by her lights, the failure […]
Alexander Russo: This past weekend, the NYT Sunday Magazine presented a package of words and images about refugee students in American schools, titled The New High-School Outsiders. Focused some of the roughly 1,300 refugees attending Boise, Idaho schools, it includes an overview essay, photographs, and profiles of a handful of Boise students who graduated high […]
Sarah Cohodes and Susan M. Dynarski: This November, Massachusetts voters will go to the polls to decide whether to expand the state’s quota on charter schools. The ballot initiative would allow 12 new, approved charters over the current limit to open each year. Would the ballot proposal be good for students in Massachusetts? To address […]
Thomas Sowell The one bright spot in black ghettos around the country are the schools that parents are free to choose for their own children. Some are Catholic schools, some are secular private schools and some are charter schools financed by public school systems but operating without the suffocating rules that apply to other public […]
Paul Ibbotson, Michael Tomasello: The idea that we have brains hardwired with a mental template for learning grammar—famously espoused by Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—has dominated linguistics for almost half a century. Recently, though, cognitive scientists and linguists have abandoned Chomsky’s “universal grammar” theory in droves because of new research examining many […]
Soumya Karlamangla Two elementary school children in Riverside County could have Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, according to health officials. Nursing staff at Indian Hills Elementary School in Jurupa Valley notified county officials Friday of the suspected infections, which will take several weeks to officially confirm, said Barbara Cole, director for disease control for […]
Michael Copperman: On a blinding September afternoon three weeks after the start of school, Assistant Principal Winston met me in his office. He stood behind his desk as if keeping it between us. “Son, what’s your approach to classroom management?” He bared his teeth when he spoke, and seemed perpetually about to say something simultaneously […]
Leif Reigstad: The video was posted on Facebook as a trailer for Vaxxed, a documentary film directed by disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield, the author of a since-retracted study that linked vaccines with autism. The film, which doubled down on his research, drew so much criticism from actual doctors that it was pulled from the […]
Doug Erickson Tommy Badger Aug 30, 2016 8:51am Our school board is living in the past. The state is not going to raise financial support for public schools. Our school board was given tools to make changes to operate in the new Republican reality. They refuse to use these new tools and continue to expect […]
Kyrie O’Connor: Buying a 3-D printer was out of the question, of course. “Our next option was to find somebody who had one,” she said. This is where the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch Library, and its staff members Jim Johnson and Patrick Ferrell, came in. Ferrell manages the Maker Space at the library, part […]
Fault Lines The chasms between our school districts are growing wider. Today, half of America’s children live in high-poverty school districts, where they are more likely to experience poor health, be exposed to violence, and attend schools in decaying buildings. This is not always due to a lack of resources in the area, however; often, […]
JD Vance: Gowing up in Middletown, Ohio, we had no sense that failing to achieve higher education would bring shame or any other consequences. The message wasn’t explicit; teachers didn’t tell us that we were too stupid or poor to make it. Nevertheless, it was all around us, like the air we breathed: No one […]
Paul Jossey: But any insurgent movement needs oxygen in the form of victories or other measured progress in order to sustain itself and grow. By sapping the Tea Party’s resources and energy, the PACs thwarted any hope of building the movement. Every dollar swallowed up in PAC overhead or vendor fees was a dollar that […]
Patrick Jonsson: Nikita Bush comes from a family of public school teachers: Her mom, aunts, uncles – nearly all of them have been involved in public education at some level. But her own teaching career ended, she says, “in heartbreak” when she had to make a decision about where her own child would go to […]
The Onion: In what experts are describing as the most marked improvement in American academic performance in decades, a study released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education has found that the majority of the nation’s students have attained the skills necessary to recognize math. “We were encouraged to find that when presented with a […]
Lilian Mongeau: From start to finish, a day in Bolt’s Russell Elementary classroom could be a primer on what high-quality preschool is supposed to look like. Children had free time to play with friends in a stimulating environment, received literacy instruction that pushed beyond comprehension to critical thinking and communication, and were introduced to complex […]
Mike Newall: The one that has moved in for a few days – the media, the delegates, the protesters of all the stripes – and the one we live in every day. The one of contradiction and divide. The one with a downtown bursting with new growth and neighborhoods plagued by the highest poverty rate […]
Liliana Segura: PREA is the Prison Rape Elimination Act, sweeping federal legislation targeting the nation’s prisons and jails. Passed in 2003, the law was aimed in part at places like this — facilities for youth who present a danger to others or themselves. But while PREA has proven hard to implement, that’s not why I […]
Joseph Asch: A member of the faculty writes in: Faculty hired 5-7 years ago were told explicitly that a couple of peer-reviewed articles and a book contract with a well-respected academic press was sufficient for tenure. I often used the word “humane” to describe the requirements for tenure, in that they rewarded both scholarship of […]
Diane Ravitch: FOR 15 years, since the passage of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act, education reformers have promoted standardized testing, school choice, competition and accountability (meaning punishment of teachers and schools) as the primary means of improving education. For many years, I agreed with them. I was an assistant secretary of education […]
By Lauren Camera and Lindsey Cook: The federal government operates a $14.5 billion program aimed at addressing this exact type of education funding inequity. It’s called Title I and it’s the pillar of the federal K-12 law known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Its purpose is to financially bolster school districts with large […]
Laurence Kotlikoff: It’s been several weeks since the Social Security Trustees released their 2016 Trustees Report. I’ve been waiting to see if either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or anyone in the press core would say a peep about the astounding $6 trillion deficit implied by the Report’s table VI.F1. Not a peep. As you […]
Anya Kamenetz: Dale Farran, a researcher at Vanderbilt University, has been watching closely how that money is spent in Tennessee. She argues the programs there are flawed, and unlikely to move the needle for the poor kids who need them most. What’s worse, Farran says, is that across states, nobody’s really watching the store when […]
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: One City Early Learning Centers of Madison, Wisconsin will be the first U.S. pilot site for the groundbreaking AnjiPlay curriculum. One City will feature environments and materials designed by AnjiPlay program founder Ms. Cheng Xueqin, and One City teachers and staff will receive training from Ms. Cheng and Dr. […]
Citizen Contributor: The result: My children missed the opportunity to enter the first round of the lottery by a mere two weeks. This meant my son entering Kindergarten was guaranteed a slot in one of our city’s worst performing schools- something our city still promises for children being displaced due to being in foster care- […]
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee’s school kids face enormous challenges — many of those challenges are directly related to the fact that so many of them grow up in impoverished homes. Some are homeless. Some are hungry. Some have only one parent. Some have none. It is difficult — and expensive — to help students in […]
Perri Klass: But can we actually stimulate children’s brains by helping them form letters with their hands? In a population of low-income children, Dr. Dinehart said, the ones who had good early fine-motor writing skills in prekindergarten did better later on in school. She called for more research on handwriting in the preschool years, and […]
Paul Lockhart: In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifths. “I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music […]