California schools' endless summers contribute to achievement gap
Louis Freedberg/California WatchStudents play basketball at John Marshall High School in Los Angeles.
As millions of California schoolchildren embark on a months-long summer vacation, low-income students are likely to lose substantial ground academically during the summer, while higher-income students will gain, according to a new report.
Most disturbing, according to a report titled "Making Summer Count," issued last week by the RAND Corp., is that the losses are cumulative and contribute substantially to the achievement gap that California and other
Parents use Facebook security features to protect kids from predators
Protecting children online has been a growing concern since, well, the Internet went mainstream. Predators can easily hide their identities, pretending to be younger and using fake profile pictures. With more than 500 million users worldwide, Facebook is the social network of choice to share photos and information, as well as to connect with people around the world. While it is against Facebook’s policy for children younger than 13 to have accounts, Consumer Reports found that more than 7.5 million do. And, even when a child doesn’t have his or her own account, a study released last year found that 92 percent of U.S. babies have some kind of online presence before age 2.
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