Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

UPDATE: Why schools alone can’t cure poverty - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Why schools alone can’t cure poverty - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:



The 9th problem with the Common Core standards

A post yesterday, in support of the Common Core State Standards, is a response to an August piece by veteran educator Marion Brady that was highly critical of the standards initiative. Here Brady takes another wack at the standards.
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Meet Jack Andraka, 15-year-old cancer researcher

This is one in an occasional series of quick profiles doing unusually interesting things.

Meet Jack Andraka, who was 14 years old (he’s all of 15 now) when he began looking for a simple way to detect early pancreatic cancer, his interest sparked by a relative’s death from the disease.
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Why schools alone can’t cure poverty

School reformers often say that great teaching can overcome the effects of poverty. Here, Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., discusses problems with this reform narrative.
By Arthur H. Camins
President Obama and other supporters of current education reform policies often speak about high quality education as students’ only chance to escape from poverty. They also want to promote science and engineering literacy. However, their singular focus on schools as the cure for poverty violates a central crosscutting concept of science and engineering, understanding systems. The National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 Science Education makes the point clearly:
Consideration of flows into and out of the system is a crucial