The Answer Sheet:
Report slams D.C.’s federally funded school voucher program
Why colleges shouldn’t check online life of applicants
Four things on which nearly all teachers agree
Arne Duncan: ‘White surburban moms’ upset that Common Core shows their kids aren’t ‘brilliant’
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school […]
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More trouble has cropped up for the D.C. school voucher program, the only federally funded program in the country that sends children to private school using public money to pay the tuition. A new U.S. General Accountability Office report says that the local agency that administers the program — which has used $152 million in federal funds since […]
Yes, Jacob and Sophia and Emma and Mason and all you other students planning to apply to college some year soon: Your online life can affect your chances of getting into the school of your dreams — or any school at all. Fair or not. According to a new survey, more college admissions officers than […]
Do educators agree on anything these days? A few things, it turns out. Here’s a post on what those are, from Roxanna Elden, a National Board Certified Teacher, speaker, and author. Her book, “See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers“ is a funny, honest, practical guide widely used for teacher training and retention. By […]
YESTERDAY
Actually, the high school coach didn’t bully the band he kicked off the field
Michael Scott, the football coach at Annandale High School in Virginia, is getting blasted in the media for yelling at the school’s award-winning marching band during halftime at a game and forcing them off the field so his players could warm up. Mean move. Stupid move. But it’s not a bullying move, which is what […]
The battle over Christmas music in school begins
It’s not even Thanksgiving but the battle over religious Christmas music at school events has already been enjoined in at least two school districts as the seemingly never-ending confusion continues over the answer to this question: Can public schools play religious music in holiday celebrations? In the Wausau School District in Wisconsin, a tussle over whether […]
A school counselor’s request to Michelle Obama
First Lady Michelle Obama has taken on a new policy role: helping to promote the idea among young people about the important of going to college. She began this week speaking to students at Bell Multicultural High School in the District, telling them about the goal President Obama set several years for the United States to […]
NOV 14
The fetishization of international test scores
Not one, not two, but 10 national educational organizations are planning to host a blowout digital event to talk about (what else?) international standardized test scores. There’s even a new Web site just for PISA Day, called, you won’t be surprised to learn, PISADay.org. The event is being held on Dec. 3, the same day […]
Getting kids to read: The 5 key habits of lifelong readers
How do people become lifelong readers? That’s a subject tackled in a new book, “Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer’s Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits,” by Donalyn Miller, a sixth-grade language arts teacher in Texas who is known as the Book Whisperer. After her first book, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in […]
A new college theology course on Bruce Springsteen
It’s been quite a week for me. First I had a somewhat reasonable educational excuse to write about John Lennon — school records showing that he was quite adept at getting detentions were being put up for sale. And now, thanks to Rutgers University, I get to write about a new Bruce Springsteen course. Here, […]
What is developmentally appropriate in learning?
What is developmentally appropriate when it comes to learning? Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham wrote about the subject recently on his Science and Education blog, and here is a version of that post. Willingham is a professor and director of graduate studies in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” […]
NOV 13
What Michelle Obama told high school students
Here from the White House’s Office of the First Lady is a transcript of what First Lady Michelle Obama said to students on her visit to Bell Multicultural High School in Washington D.C. this week. The First Lady is taking on a new policy role in the Obama administration: urging high school students to go […]
Why a school district changed its name
The 12,000-student school district in the northwestern Pennsylvania city of Erie is no longer calling itself the Erie School District. Instead, officials are rebranding the district as Erie’s Public Schools, designed to promote the idea that the public owns the schools. Matthew Cummings, the district’s director of communications, was quoted by the Erie Times-News as saying: As […]
‘On the Definition of Hope’: a student poem
Blessed Sheriff is a junior in the International Baccalaureate program at Richard Montgomery High School in Montgomery County, Md., who wants to be a writer and study psychology. She won second place in the 2013 Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest, in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. Here’s a poem, titled On the Definition of […]
Playing the ‘Who Has It Worse?’ game
Who has not played the game “Who Has It Worse?” at one time or another? Here’s a column from the Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, about how this particular game is played to excess during midterm season. It was written by Brooke H. Kantor ’15, a Near Eastern languages and civilizations concentrator in Dunster […]
NOV 12
All that bad information about the new NAEP scores
The 2013 math and reading scores for the National Assessment of Educational Progress were recently released and there has been a lot of loud reaction — both triumphant and defeatist — about the results. If you listen to D.C. public schools officials, a bump up in scores proves the results show how brilliant their school […]
Maryland teacher petitions to cancel state standardized test
A Maryland teacher has started a petition to cancel this year’s administration of the Maryland School Assessment test because the results will have no validity and it is “an irresponsible waste of taxpayer money and instructional time to administer this test.” Tiferet Ani from Blake High School in Montgomery County wrote in this on the move.org […]
Fraternity pledge loses testicle in hazing stunt
The nauseating fraternity/sorority stories – many of them involving hazing — just keep on coming. The latest is from Wilmington College in Ohio, where three pledges of Gamma Phi Gamma who were taken to the basement of the fraternity, called “Gobbler House,” and subjected to a series of miserable exercises, including being blindfolded, told to […]
NOV 11
Record number of foreigners study in U.S. while more American students go overseas
A record number of foreign students are enrolled at American colleges and universities in 2012 — led by hundreds of thousands of Chinese — while, at the same time, more American students are studying abroad than ever before, according to a new report. The annual report, released Monday by the Institute of International Education, says […]
John Lennon’s ‘bad boy’ behavior: School detention records up for sale
I’ll use any excuse to write about John Lennon, but here’s a really good one: Twice, John Lennon earned three detentions in the same day when he was a young student at Quarry Bank High School for Boys in Liverpool, according to school detention records being auctioned. According to this story in the Independent (which is […]
America’s veterans: Who they are
Here are some facts and figures explaining who America’s veterans are, when they fought, and more. This is courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau, which puts out data on major American holidays every year. Veterans Day 2013: Nov. 11 Veterans Day originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end […]
Why Veterans Day is on Nov. 11
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. That’s when the armistice ending World War I began in 1918, and that is the origin of Veterans Day (note that it is spelled without an apostrophe), a U.S. holiday often confused with Memorial Day. Memorial Day honors America’s war dead, while Veterans Day […]
NOV 10
The R-rated film high school students should see
Kids as young as 13 were free to waltz into a theater this year to watch the violence-laden “Iron Man 3,” which was rated PG-13 and featured terrorists executing people, bombings and a bad guy holding a gun to a child’s head. It’s regular fare these days for young people, allowable in the movies because […]
Schools letting kids with hair lice stay in class
For years now, students found with lice in their hair were sent home and weren’t allowed back to school until the lice were gone. Not anymore. The Associated Press writes in this story that some schools in a number of states have relaxed the rules, allowing students with lice to stay in class. The reason? […]
Tolstoy endures — but here’s why the liberal arts might not
Are the liberal arts really dying in higher education, and if so, how fast? Writing about it in this post is Liz Willen, editor at The Hechinger Report, an independently funded unit of Teachers College at Columbia University. She is also director of The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College. This appeared on the […]
NOV 09
School reformer Vallas to run for Illinois lieutenant governor
Just days after voters in Bridgeport, Conn., elected a school board seen as being more likely to fire Paul Vallas as superintendent than to embrace him, it was announced that the well-known school reformer will run for lieutenant governor in Illinois. He wants to be on the same 2014 Democratic ticket as Gov. Pat Quinn. […]
Teacher to Gov. Christie: Enough already
The state of New Jersey just got some good news about its students: On the newly released 2013 National Assessment for Educational Progress scores, they were at or near the top in fourth and eighth grade math and reading — and low-income students did either better or near the top when compared to poor students […]
Why young kids are struggling with Common Core math
Common Core critics argue that some of the standards are not developmentally appropriate for young students. Earlier this year I published this post by Edward Miller and Nancy Carlsson-Paige about how the standards smack in the face of what we know about how young children learn. Here’s is a new post with concerns about the […]
NOV 08
Starr, Alonso: Candidates for NYC schools chancellor?
Two education leaders in the greater Washington region — which for the purposes of this post includes Baltimore — are believed to be among those under considering to become the next chancellor of the largest school district in the country, New York City. Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio has said he will hire someone who has […]
Where 4th graders are forced to take 33 standardized tests a year
When you hear people talk about the explosion of standardized testing in public education in the No Child Left Behind/Race to the Top era, it may be hard to understand just what that means to a student sitting in a classroom. This may help explain: Fourth graders in the Pittsburgh Public Schools will take 33 […]
Common Core implementation called ‘worse’ than Healthcare.gov launch
Whether you support the Common Core State Standards or don’t, it’s hard to argue that the implementation so far has been smooth. I’ve posted some pieces about just bad the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and related testing has been going in New York (for example, here) but here’s a comparison that will make […]
Teacher: What I can’t do for students
We hear a lot about the responsibility of teachers in the effort to help students achieve, but what about students themselves? In this post, a public school teacher (who asked not to be identified because she fears she could be targeted by her bosses), writes about the complexities of her job and what frustrates her […]