Jackie Goldberg Hits the LAUSD Board Running

Jackie Goldberg Hits the LAUSD Board Running

Jackie Goldberg Hits the LAUSD Board Running

I can’t support us fixing computers and stuff for a charter school co-located with a district school that doesn’t have the same technology.”
– Jackie Goldberg

Backed by Jackie Goldberg’s overwhelming electoral victory, George McKenna and Scott Schmerelson revisited their motion from last August to temporarily appoint her to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board Seat vacated by convicted felon Ref Rodriguezuntil the votes can be officially certified. Despite the fact that the Brown Act prohibits the Board from coordinating their actions outside of the public view, it appeared from the outset of the May 21st meeting that the decision had made in advance as Board President Monica Garcia had already given Goldberg a seat at the dais. However, the Board had to hear public comment before taking the official vote. This is what I had to say:

It is great to be here on this exciting day with some positive change for once. I would just like to point out that this should have happened last August. There was no reason why the residents of Board District 5 should have been unrepresented for all of this time. But at least we are finally here.

Jackie, welcome to the Board. I look forward to standing behind you CONTINUE READING: Jackie Goldberg Hits the LAUSD Board Running

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Gay Pride Month Starts Today

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Gay Pride Month Starts Today
Gay Pride Month Starts Today

The month of June was chosen for LGBT Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June 1969. As a result, many pride events are held during this month to recognize the impact LGBT people have had in the world.

From Nerd and Lace

Whether in support of Gay Pride Month or just about being a parent, here's a great poem:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Gay Pride Month Starts Today

Jersey Jazzman: NJ's Student Growth Measures (SGPs): Still Biased, Still Used Inappropriately

Jersey Jazzman: NJ's Student Growth Measures (SGPs): Still Biased, Still Used Inappropriately

NJ's Student Growth Measures (SGPs): Still Biased, Still Used Inappropriately

What follows is yet another year's worth of data analysis on New Jersey's student "growth" measure: Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs).

And yet another year of my growing frustration and annoyance with the policymakers and pundits who insist on using these measures inappropriately, despite all the evidence.

Because it's not like we haven't looked at this evidence before. Bruce Baker started back in 2013, when SGPs were first being used in making high-stakes decisions about schools and in teacher evaluations; he followed up with a more formal report later that year.

Gerald Goldin, a professor emeritus at Rutgers, expressed his concerns back in 2016. I wrote about the problems with SGPs in 2018, including an open letter to members of the NJ Legislature.

But here we are in 2019, and SGPs continue to be employed in assessments of school quality and in teacher evaluations. Yes, the weight of SGPs in a teacher's overall evaluation has been cut back significantly, down to 5 percent -- but it's still part of the overall score. And SGPs are still a big part of the NJDOE's School Performance Reports.

So SGPs still matter, even though they have a clear and substantial flaw -- one acknowledged by their creator himself --  that renders them invalid for use in evaluating schools and teachers. As I wrote last year:

It's a well-known statistical precept that variables measured with error tend to bias positive estimates in a regression model downward, thanks to something called attenuation bias. Plain English translation: Because test scores are CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: NJ's Student Growth Measures (SGPs): Still Biased, Still Used Inappropriately

Charter Schools Conceived, Organized, and Imposed by the Rich | Dissident Voice

Charter School Promoters Criticize and Complain About Charter Schools While Pushing For More Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

Charter School Promoters Criticize and Complain About Charter Schools While Pushing For More Charter Schools

The narrow aim of maximizing profit as fast as possible compels owners of capital to say and do whatever they have to to get richer, no matter how irrational and contradictory, and no matter the cost to society and the environment. Such an aim is irresponsible and outdated, and needs to be replaced by a human-centered aim that recognizes the need for a modern economy controlled by the working class and people themselves.

The key distinction between class will and personal will is critical to appreciate here because it cuts through persistent confusion surrounding why major owners of capital do what they do. Individuals are not the only ones with a will. Social classes, as objective phenomena, also have their own will and dynamics. Focusing only on personal whims and intentions limits comprehension of social phenomena.

Capital is first and foremost an unequal social relationship, not a person or a thing. Major owners of capital are the personification of capital, the embodiment of capital, also known as capital personified or capital incarnate.

This theoretical insight is critical because it takes us away from the rabbit hole of personal intentions and personal will, and allows us instead to objectively locate greed, insecurity, inequality, poverty, unemployment, and other problems in the intrinsic built-in nature, logic, and movement of capital itself. Recognizing and grasping this shift from personal intentions to the internal core dynamics of capital itself is priceless.

In short, the concept of individuals as the personification of economic categories helps us move beyond an individual’s personal ambitions and understand the bigger, broader, deeper reasons for unequal relations in society, that is, the structure of social relations under capital.

As agents of capital, as bearers of specific class interests, major owners of capital cannot exist without constantly amassing socially-produced wealth. The singular aim of capital is to accumulate as much wealth as rapidly as possible,¹ no matter how irrational and harmful the consequences are to the common good. Owners of capital will quickly go out of business if they fail to out-compete and out-profit other owners of capital.

A violent dog-eat-dog world is not a mirage.

Charter Schools Conceived, Organized, and Imposed by the Rich

Charter schools were conceived, organized, and promoted with impunity by wealthy individuals, organizations, and corporations, not grass-roots forces, more than 30 years ago. The idea of chartering was discussed even before CONTINUE READING: Charter School Promoters Criticize and Complain About Charter Schools While Pushing For More Charter Schools | Dissident Voice

CURMUDGUCATION: NH: Outsourcing and Privatizing Public Education

CURMUDGUCATION: NH: Outsourcing and Privatizing Public Education

NH: Outsourcing and Privatizing Public Education

New Hampshire's education commissioner has decided to push a really terrible education idea. It's called "Learn Everywhere," and it looks like a new approach to replacing public education, a kind of true backdoor approach to vouchering. It comes dressed in pretty language, but it still smells like a recently fertilized field on a warm summer day.

Frank Edelblut was a businessman, venture capitalist, and one-term NH state representative before he decided to run for the governor's seat. He was beaten in the primary by Chris Sununu, son of former NH governor and Bush I White House Chief of Staff John Sununu (full disclosure: my grandmother was a NH GOP representative for decades, including under John Sununu, and she did not have a very high opinion of him). Edelblut gracefully conceded and publicly supported Sununu, who then appointed Edelblut to the top education job, despite Edelblut's complete lack of anything remotely resembling education experience.

All of Edelblut's children were home schooled. As a legislator, he backed vouchers and as a candidate he backed personalized [sic] learning. Sununu said that the homeschooling was a plus because it meant Edelblut understood alternative methods of education. The state board of CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: NH: Outsourcing and Privatizing Public Education

National Education Policy Center Reviews Claims about Fiscal Impact of Charters and Finds Them Shallow and Misleading | Diane Ravitch's blog

National Education Policy Center Reviews Claims about Fiscal Impact of Charters and Finds Them Shallow and Misleading | Diane Ravitch's blog

National Education Policy Center Reviews Claims about Fiscal Impact of Charters and Finds Them Shallow and Misleading

Bruce Baker of Rutgers University reviewed three policy briefs produced by the pro-charter, pro-choice Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington and found them to be “generally superficial and misleading.” The apparent intent of these briefs was to influence the policy debate in California, in which Governor Newsom and the Legislature are considering whether to take into account the fiscal impact of charters on public schools. Baker’s review was sponsored by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado.

Reviewed by Bruce D. Baker University of Colorado Boulder May 2019

Executive Summary

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), based at the University of Washington, Bothell, recently released a series of three policy briefs on the financial impact of charter schools on nearby school districts in California. The briefs arrive at a time when a Task Force convened by California Gov. Gavin Newsom is deliberating on these exact matters. CRPE’s founder, Paul Hill, was a key source of testimony to the task force, serving as an expert viewed as “sympathetic to charter schools.”

The three briefs make note of the task force in their introduction and are seemingly intended to inform these ongoing debates over charter school financing and expansion in the state of California. The briefs are as follows.

• The first brief, Charter Schools and District Enrollment Loss, posits that charter school enrollment growth is not a significant factor in large district enrollment decline in California.
• The second brief, Do Charter Schools Cause Fiscal Distress in School Districts?, argues that charter school expansion is not a significant contributor to fiscal distress (fiscal stress and/or fiscal impact) in California school districts.
• The final brief, Do the Costs of California Charter Schools Outweigh the Benefits?, contends that there are “tangible benefits” and “few quantifiable costs” to charter schooling in California, though it does concede that a more thorough cost-benefit analysis is warranted.

The first brief acknowledges that over the long run, California charter school expansion has resulted in some district enrollment decline. But the brief contends that this decline has been modest and in recent years is no longer occurring. Further, the report asserts that whether charter schools expand or not, many districts will face continuing enrollment decline and “the financial challenges it brings” (p. 10).

The second brief lays out a set of figures showing charter school enrollment shares and comparing this to county-assigned classifications of district fiscal distress. It concludes boldly that (a) there is no relationship between charter enrollment share and host district fiscal distress; (b) instead, fiscal distress is most often caused by financial mismanagement; and (c) fiscal distress is too important to get wrong.

The third brief first asserts that there are benefits to, but few if any tangible costs associated with, charter schooling in California. Those benefits are illustrated by reports of differences in test score gains for children in some urban California charter schools versus matched peers in host districts. The brief also cites a handful of studies to support its contention that charter expansion also benefits, or at least does not harm, children in host district schools. Finally, it notes other potential benefits for children enrolled in charter schools, for which quantifiable values are more difficult to assign, including: “The option to choose” (p. 4).

On the potential-costs side of charter expansion, the third brief provides a short list, including, (a) lacking/losing economies of scale, (b) transfers/fiscal impact, (c) capital costs, (d) educating high-cost students, and (e) social cohesion and societal concerns. The authors then dismiss these five concerns, offering the conclusion that there are “few quantifiable costs to charter schooling” in California (p. 6). Yet they provide little analysis or reference to any valid, rigorous analysis by any other researchers.

Robin Lake, Ashley Jochim, Paul Hill, and Sivan Tuchman wrote these briefs and qualify their work with identical wording: “Given the time constraints for informing the commis- sion’s and legislator’s questions, we were limited to data available from earlier studies and from federal, state, and local databases, as cited in the three briefs” (p. 2 of each brief).

These limitations did impair the usefulness of the briefs, but other problems are also evi- dent. The first brief is misleading in its assertion that charter enrollment growth is not to blame for district enrollment decline. It is, and has been for some time, whether in districts with declining, stable or growing overall student enrollments. The brief also attempts to minimize the import of the considerable role played by charters in districts’ enrollment loss, offering up the non sequitur that enrollment loss can arise from other sources as well. The second brief relies on overly simplistic comparisons of charter enrollments and county-assigned “fiscal distress” classifications to conclude that there is no association between charter enrollments and fiscal distress. The contention here is that there can’t be an illness if the patient isn’t dead. In order to rely on this problematic approach, the brief erroneously dismisses a significant, more rigorous, detailed, peer-reviewed and published body of research that illustrates the fiscal impact of charter schools on host districts, and how those fiscal impacts may lead to fiscal stress. The third brief, which presents itself as an analysis of costs and benefits, merely touts the benefits of charter schooling as tangible while being entirely dismissive of numerous known and often measurable costs. Taken together, the briefs are useful only in pointing to some important issues that policymakers should consider; their analyses of those issues are, however, generally superficial and misleading.National Education Policy Center Reviews Claims about Fiscal Impact of Charters and Finds Them Shallow and Misleading | Diane Ravitch's blog

NEPC Review: California Charter Schools: Costs, Benefits, and Impact on School Districts (Center on Reinventing Public Education, May 2019) | National Education Policy Center - https://nepc.colorado.edu/node/9821 on @NEPCtweet

CURMUDGUCATION: Rewarding Failing Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: Rewarding Failing Schools

Rewarding Failing Schools

One of the problems with the business oriented view of education reveals itself in the use of the word "reward."

As long as the debate has raged, we can find commentators, thinky tanks, and policy makers arguing that giving more resources to struggling schools is "rewarding" them for failure. (Here's an example, and here's another.) For many folks, this seems simple and straightforward, but it's really not.

Imagine two small children. Pat is growing up in a poor home and not receiving the kind of food necessary to thrive. Chris is growing up in a wealthy home and gets all the food and nutrition necessary to do well. Chris is big and strong, well at the top of the charts for growth. Pat is thin and emaciated, near the bottom of the chart for growth.

Let's imagine a government program for distributing food to families of young children. Who would like to argue that Pat should not get any of this food because it would just be rewarding Pat for failing to grow big and strong?

For some folks, it seems impossible to view money as anything other than revenue. In business, money is your reward for doing a good job. That's the whole point.

But (at the risk of repeating myself) public schools are not businesses. They do not generate revenue. They do not produce a profit. And money is not a reward; it's a resource.

This idea hurts some people's heads. Health care and public education have always treated money mainly as a resource, something you spend in order to take care of people. Yes, there have been plenty of money-related arguments in public education, but they are virtually all (including teacher CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Rewarding Failing Schools

Michigan: State Attorney General Will Take a Position Opposite to the Governor in Detroit Literacy Lawsuit | Diane Ravitch's blog

Michigan: State Attorney General Will Take a Position Opposite to the Governor in Detroit Literacy Lawsuit | Diane Ravitch's blog

Michigan: State Attorney General Will Take a Position Opposite to the Governor in Detroit Literacy Lawsuit

Now, this gets interesting.

Two days ago, I posted about the battle in Michigan over who is responsible for the deplorable conditions in the public schools of Detroit. Critics claimed that Governor Whitmer was abandoning her campaign promises.

The new Democratic Governor Whitmer disappointed some supporters by asserting that the state was not responsible for the miseducation of the children of Detroit, although Detroit has been under state control for nearly 20 years.

The State Attorney General disagrees. 

Mackinac Island — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said she will file in opposition to the governor’s position in a lawsuit alleging that the state deprived Detroit students of their right to literacy due to deplorable conditions at the facilities and dwindling numbers of teachers and textbooks.

At the Mackinac Policy Conference Wednesday, Nessel told The Detroit News that while her office has a duty to represent the governor she also is an independently elected official with an obligation to represent the people of the state of Michigan.

She intends to file parens patriae, or on behalf of the residents of Michigan, “to do what I think is best for them personally.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday argued in a response to the lawsuit filed by the attorney general’s office that because Detroit schools have been returned to local control the state should not be subject to the lawsuit..

“Sometimes I’m not always going to be in lock step with CONTINUE READING: Michigan: State Attorney General Will Take a Position Opposite to the Governor in Detroit Literacy Lawsuit | Diane Ravitch's blog

My Day Observing and Interviewing Young Teachers - Teacher Habits

My Day Observing and Interviewing Young Teachers - Teacher Habits

My Day Observing and Interviewing Young Teachers

I had the pleasure yesterday of serving on my school’s interview team for a third grade position. Five candidates, four of whom just finished their student teaching and one of whom has five years of teaching experience, competed for the job. They each taught a 15-minute lesson and answered questions for a half-hour. Here are five thoughts:

Our kids are in good hands

I’ve been on interview committees a few times before and I am always impressed by the quality of the candidates. While the data says that our “best and brightest” are going into other fields, I’m forced to take issue with their criteria. These are high-quality people who are signing up for a difficult job because they want to make a difference and help kids. With teacher strikes, social media, a Secretary of Education who’s hostile to public schools, and teacher resignation letters regularly going viral, no one goes into education today ignorant of the challenges. These people are signing up anyway. The banks can have the valedictorians; I’ll take the idealists.

It’s a limited sample size, but the young people who are becoming teachers today seem better trained than those with whom I competed almost 20 years ago. Frankly, just-out-of-college me would not compare favorably to the current just-out-college teachers-to-be, with their higher-than-mine GPAs, overseas teaching experiences, and CONTINUE READING: My Day Observing and Interviewing Young Teachers - Teacher Habits

Did Austin Beutner Sabotage Measure EE?

Did Austin Beutner Sabotage Measure EE?

Did Austin Beutner Sabotage Measure EE?

You can’t change it without us re-voting.”= LAUSD Board Member Richard VladovicThat is correct.”– LAUSD General Counsel David Holmquist

Los Angeles students are in desperate need of the funds promised from Measure EE. As noted by Dr. Rocio Rivas, “California ranks 43rd in per-pupil spending with an investment of less than $11,000 per student, which is below the national average of approximately $12,526. In addition, California is ranked 48th in class size.” As a comparison, in the 2014–15 school year, New York state spent $20,744 per student. Unable to rely on the state or federal governments to help properly fund our education system, Los Angeles must look to fixing the problem ourselves by passing the parcel tax.

Despite being the direct beneficiaries of a well-educated workforce, there are members of the business community who are unwilling to make this investment. As of today, they have spent $1,350,261 to fund opposition to Measure EE. These interests support the status quo where class sizes are above what is recommended by experts, school nurses are in short supply and libraries are subject to closure.

In the event that Measure EE falls short of the two-thirds majority it needs to pass, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Austin Beutner has delivered his corporate allies a CONTINUE READING: Did Austin Beutner Sabotage Measure EE?

“Restaurant” & “Charter School” Are Vague Descriptors | The Merrow Report

“Restaurant” & “Charter School” Are Vague Descriptors | The Merrow Report

“Restaurant” & “Charter School” Are Vague Descriptors

“Charter School” is a vague descriptive term, akin to “Restaurant,”  in that neither term tells you very much. One of them, however, is dangerously vague.

“Restaurant” is vague but not dangerous.  The word tells you only that the establishment serves food of some kind, but nothing else. It might offer great cuisine–or greasy slop.  It might be a fast-food joint or a 3-Star Michelin legend with a 6-month waiting list for a reservation.   And, if you do go there for a meal, that’s the extent of your obligation.  If it’s bad, you can get up from the table and leave….

So, now imagine you are standing outside a building sporting a sign reading “Charter School.”   All you can discern from the term is that it’s one of about 7,000 publicly funded but privately managed charter schools.   And the possibilities of what that charter school might be are dizzying.  Here are just some of them:

1. It might be part of a national chain of schools or a stand-alone “Mom and Pop” school;
2. It might have been authorized locally or set up by a distant authority (which may not be keeping its eye on things);
3. It might have a Board of Directors made up of local parents and other residents, or it could be controlled from afar by a Board with no local representation whatsoever;
4. It might have an admissions test, even though it is supposedly a public school, CONTINUE READING: “Restaurant” & “Charter School” Are Vague Descriptors | The Merrow Report

End Charter Schools! Consider Creative Ways to Address Schooling

End Charter Schools! Consider Creative Ways to Address Schooling

End Charter Schools! Consider Creative Ways to Address Schooling

It’s time to end the charter school experiment.

Put successful charters under the supervision of the nearby school district. Charters not working well should close. No charter school should get tax dollars without oversight. This should be for both for-profit and nonprofit charter schools.

Charter School Scandals

On twitter, educators and parents can follow the Network of Public Education’s (NPE) #AnotherDayAnotherCharterScandal. Executive Director Carol Burris and her team also have several reports outlining how taxpayers lose their money to corruption involving charter schools.

More recently Burris and Jeff Bryant provided a new NPE report “Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for A Ride” showing more proof that this nation wastes money on corrupt charter schools.

It is appalling we permit these schools to run without oversight.

A Recent Charter School Scandal

In California, eleven people responsible for an online charter school serving students in 13 charter schools were recently indicted on criminal charges of conspiracy. They put the money into their bank accounts instead of the schools! It looks like A3 Education bilked the public $50 million.

As this scandal continues to unfold, somewhere in California’s public schools, teachers CONTINUE READING: End Charter Schools! Consider Creative Ways to Address Schooling

THIS WEEK Education Research Report

Education Research Report

THIS WEEK 

Education Research Report

Letter writing instruction: too little practice with low frequency letters

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

Children’s ability to write letters automatically has been linked to academic achievement. Despite the importance of handwriting, handwriting instruction is often neglected and teachers use inconsistent practices to teach handwriting. Specifically, the frequency that children are presented opportunities to write individual block letters in handwriting workbooks has not been studied. This study pr

The Head Start Advantage

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

For more than 50 years, Head Start has provided early learning opportunities for our country’s most vulnerable children and partnered with families to ad-dress their long-term economic stability and better health prospects. Today, Head Start serves more than one million children from birth to five years old and their families each year, changing lives not just in the present but also ultimately m

Evaluation of North Carolina Early Childhood Program Among Middle School Students

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

Kenneth Dodge , Helen Ladd , Clara Muschkin , and Yu Bai have published a series of academic articles evaluating the impact of North Carolina’s Smart Start (SS) and More at Four (MF) programs (now known as NC Pre-K) on children’s academic outcomes through elementary school (Ladd et al., 2014; Muschkin et al. 2015; Muschkin et al. 2018; Dodge et al. 2018). The current analysis extends the evaluati

Focus on Early Childhood Learning in Order to Raise Achievement in Predominantly Disadvantaged School Districts

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 23h

Complete report A student’s economic background is a strong predictor of his or her academic performance. This study sought to identify characteristics of school districts that are predominantly economically disadvantaged and perform well academically. Using a national dataset of average test scores for school districts from 2009–2015, the Program Evaluation Division (PED) identified characterist

MAY 30

Belief in learning styles myth may be detrimental

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Many people, including educators, believe learning styles are set at birth and predict both academic and career success even though there is no scientific evidence to support this common myth, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. In two online experiments with 668 participants, more than 90 percent of them believed people learn better if they are taught i

Playing in youth team sports tied to lower rates of depression, anxiety, particularly in boys

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Adolescents who experienced adverse events in childhood had better mental health in adulthood if they played sports in their youth, researchers found. Among individuals with adverse childhood experiences (ACE), those who played team sports in middle school and high school had a significantly lower chance of receiving a diagnosis of depression (propensity score-weighted adjusted odds ratio 0.76, 9

Perspectives on Social and Emotional Learning in America's Schools

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which students develop such interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies as teamwork, social awareness, self-regulation, and emotional awareness. Although schools in the United States have always addressed these competencies, in recent years, the availability of resources to address SEL has expanded, and educators are increasingly adoptin

Media Advisory Thursday, May 30, 2019 Being teased about weight may lead to more weight gain among children

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 1d

Youth who said they were teased or ridiculed about their weight increased their body mass by 33% more each year, compared to a similar group who had not been teased, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health. The findings appear to contradict the belief that such teasing might motivate youth to change their behavior and attempt to lose weight. The study was conducted by Natash

Briefs on the financial impact of charter schools fail to accurately or fully apply the relevant research and data

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), based at the University of Washington, Bothell, recently released a series of three policy briefs on the financial impact of charter schools on nearby school districts in California. The briefs are intended to inform ongoing debates over charter school financing and expansion in the state of California. After reviewing all three, Professor Bruce

MAY 29

A student's disability status depends on where they go to school

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

A new Portland State University study suggests that the likelihood of a child being classified with an educational disability depends on the characteristics of their school and how distinctive they are from their peers. The study, published in the journal Society and Mental Health , found that disability classifications do not occur reliably across schools. The study used annual child- and school

Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2019

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

Complete report As reported in previous National Education Policy Center virtual schools reports, the number of virtual schools in the U.S. continues to grow. In 2017-18, 501 full-time virtual schools enrolled 297,712 students, and 300 blended schools enrolled 132,960. Enrollments in virtual schools increased by more than 2,000 students between 2016-17 and 2017-18, and enrollments in blended lear

The Arts in Schools of Choice

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

Since the Every Student Succeeds Act became law, states have taken advantage of opportunities to engage the arts more broadly in education policy— from including the arts in STEMeducation to using the arts as a strategy to meet the needs of underserved youth. At the same time, many states’ policy agendas address school choice, with ongoing discussion by champions and critics alike. However, many

- U.S. has cut school dropout rates by nearly two-thirds, and teen births by half since 2000

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 2d

- FAIRFIELD, Conn. (May 28, 2019) – At least 280 million children, or 1 in 8, are dramatically better off today than at any time in the past two decades, a new report by Save the Children has found. The 100-year-old humanitarian organization’s Global Childhood Report ranks the best and worst countries for children by examining factors that rob children of their childhoods around the world such as

MAY 28

Why parents should teach their kids to give

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3d

Financial education often stresses the importance of earning and saving, but new research suggests that one of the most valuable lessons parents can teach their children about money might be how to appropriately give it away. The study, led by University of Arizona researcher Ashley LeBaron and published in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues , explores how financial-giving habits are passe

Interleaved mathematics practice is effective and feasible

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 3d

Every school day, many millions of mathematics students complete a set of practice problems that can be solved with the same strategy, such as adding fractions by finding a common denominator. In an alternative approach known as interleaved practice, practice problems are arranged so that no two consecutive problems can be solved by the same strategy, and this approach forces students to choose a

How States and Districts Are Helping K-12 Homeless Students

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 4d

Complete report States and districts are finding avenues to assist homeless students, a population who struggles to be seen and whose numbers continue to rise in many states. State educational agencies reported that 1.3 million homeless students were enrolled in public schools during the 2016-17 school year. Imagine that number for a moment — 1,355,821 — which is more than the entire student popu

MAY 27

orequisite mathematics remediation can result in greater student success than is obtained with traditional remediation

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 4d

Traditional mathematics remediation is based on the theory that traditional mathematics remedial courses increase students’ subsequent academic performance. However, most students assigned to these courses do not pass them and thus cannot graduate. An alternative approach, corequisite remediation, assigns students instead to college-level quantitative courses with additional academic support, oft

MAY 24

Engagement in student clubs helps undergraduates find good employment

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 7d

IMAGE: Binary logistic regression analysis examining the relationship between different types of undergraduate engagement and self-reported critical thinking skills. view more Credit: I. Shcheglova, Yu. Koreshnikova and O. Parshina. A good employer values job applicants with well-developed analytical skills, such as the ability to perceive and interpret information, analyse and assess arguments,

Race and GenderDifferences in Teacher Evaluation Ratings and Teacher Employment Outcomes

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 7d

Complete report Over the past decade, Michigan has made changes to a number of laws related to teachers and teaching in the state’s public school system. These changes include new requirements for teacher evaluation, and the use of teacher performance ratings for decisions such as teacher tenure, dismissal and retention. Since 2011, state law has required local education agencies (districts) to r

A Rising Share of Undergraduates Are From Poor Families, Especially at Less Selective Colleges

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 8d

The overall number of undergraduates at U.S. colleges and universities has increased dramatically over the past 20 years, with growth fueled almost exclusively by an influx of students from low-income families and students of color. But these changes are not occurring uniformly across the postsecondary landscape. The rise of poor and minority undergraduates has been most pronounced in public two-

Toxic stress and children’s outcomes

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 8d

"Stress” is a commonplace term for hormonal changes that occur in response to frightening or threatening events or conditions. When severe, these changes are termed “toxic” stress and can impede children’s behavior, cognitive capacity, and emotional and physical health. Frightening or threatening situations are more sustained and are experienced more frequently by African American and socially an

59 percent of teachers take on additional paid work to supplement their pay

by Jonathan Kantrowitz / 8d

A new report by EPI Economist Emma García and Research Associate Elaine Weiss adds to a growing body of research on the financial hardships faced by teachers. The authors find a connection between poor compensation for 

Education Research Report