In New Orleans, students who drink from a school water fountain may be exposed to lead, reports Marta Jewson of The Lens.
New Orleans public schools students are returning to school without the water filters to remove lead that district officials promised to install last year. #tellEWAhttps://t.co/xKynKQPpvN
For Parkland students, recovery comes in many forms, reports WLRN’s Jessica Bakeman.
#tellEWA Check out the first two parts of Stoneman Douglas Stronger, our series on Parkland’s long-term recovery, marking the six-month anniversary and back-to-school: https://t.co/GjOcDdZcJe
Many a liberal arts institution has attempted to diversify revenue streams and student pools by opening graduate programs, but at least one in New York State moved in the opposite direction this summer.
In Waterbury, Conn., where she taught high school history, Jahana Hayes always told her students to never become resigned to the challenging conditions they were raised in. Hayes, who was raised amid drug addiction and became a mother before she graduated high school, understood firsthand her students’ struggles with poverty and broken homes.
“I built my teaching career by telling my students you don’t get to complain here,” said Hayes, who in 2016 was named National Teacher of the Year. “If you see a problem in your community, you go and fix it.”
Billionaire developer Jeff Greene is an unconventional Democrat running an unconventional campaign for Florida governor. So, naturally, his ideas on how to change Florida’s vast public education bureaucracy stem from an unconventional place.
Standing in a former West Palm Beach car dealership that he converted two years ago into a schoolhouse, Greene explains how the future of Florida’s schools lies in shrinking class sizes, replacing letter grades with detailed evaluations and adopting the latest technologies.
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a speech last year, gave a strong hint at his views on taxpayer support for religious schools when he praised his “first judicial hero,” Justice William Rehnquist, for determining that the strict wall between church and state “was wrong as a matter of law and history.”
When Jamarria Hall strode into Osborn High in Detroit his freshman year, the signs of decay were everywhere: buckets in the hallways to catch leaking water, rotting ceiling tiles, vermin that crisscrossed classrooms.
At 7:50 on Monday morning, when school started at the University Charter School in Livingston, in west Alabama’s Sumter County, students in kindergarten through eighth grade began a new era, hardly aware of the history they were making.
For the first time, black students and white students are learning side-by-side in integrated public school classrooms. More than half of the school’s 300-plus students are black, while just under half are white.
Brenda Madrid, una estudiante inmigrante en Nueva York, pensó que su último año en la escuela secundaria, sería el inicio de un futuro lleno de éxitos. Ella se reunió en dos ocasiones con un consejero estudiantil que al enterarse de su estado migratorio, le recomendó inmediatamente que aplicara a un Colegio Comunitario y no a una universidad. Ella, por falta de opciones, siguió su consejo.
Fernanda Zamudio-SuarézThe Chronicle of Higher Education
The U.S. Department of Education has officially proposed repealing the gainful-employment rule, a policy that punished higher-education programs whose graduates accumulated excessive student-loan debt, according to a notice of proposed rulemaking released Friday.
The mid-June clouds stark white and heavy with impending rain, Darby Dugay listened for the splatter of falling drops, noting that the foul weather might delay her basketball practice.
Nearly a year after Hurricane Harvey submerged coastal Port Arthur, the rain still brings the 17-year-old’s heart rate up, especially when water overflows the long-neglected drainage ditches lining the neighborhood’s sidewalks.
UNC-Chapel Hill has spent $21 million on legal, public relations and investigative costs related to its long-running academic scandal, bills released Friday show.
The bills from 2016 through this year show the university has spent more than $3.5 million on several law firms involved in successfully defending the university against NCAA allegations and individual lawsuits by former athletes. The university had previously spent nearly $18 million on legal, public relations, investigative and records production costs.
As Alabama’s children return to school, safety is on the minds of many school officials. Districts across the state used the summer months to add security upgrades to their schools and train teachers and school personnel in new ways of keeping students safe.
“There’s more interest in school safety than anything I’ve seen in probably 20 years,” Alabama Superintendent Eric Mackey said.
Fortified by fences and patrolled by more armed personnel, schools will open their doors to students for the start of the new year with a heightened focus on security intended to ease fears about deadly campus shootings.
The massacre in Parkland, Fla., one of the most lethal in American history, unnerved school administrators across the country, who devoted the summer to reinforcing buildings and hiring security.
Inside an underground meeting room attached to the U.S. Capitol, past guards and metal detectors, lawmakers and officials from leading security companies discussed a burgeoning threat of mass school shootings and the dire need to “harden” campuses before someone else gets killed.
For 25 years, the Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker has studied and written about the segregated schooling of black children. In her latest book, The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools, Walker tells the little-known story of how black educators in the South—courageously and covertly—laid the groundwork for 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education and weathered its aftermath.
The state needs a dynamic way to boost teacher pay so Texas can recruit and retain the best educators.
But Texas leaders have fumbled on exactly what to do and how to get there.
On Wednesday, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath once again pointed to Dallas as a model to follow, saying two key DISD efforts have turned around struggling schools by getting the most talented teachers to them — namely by paying them more.
Voters think about a lot of things at the polls: immigration, the economy, health care, gun policy, and—more cynically—party affiliation. But education is an issue that doesn’t typically poll near the top of the list, even though it’s often thought of as a bedrock of society. Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s public-schools chief, and the most likely Democratic candidate to take on Governor Scott Walker in November’s gubernatorial election, is banking on the fact that that’s changing.
Vista High School principal Anthony Barela had a vivid image of what school here could look like after a $10 million grant to reimagine learning: Rolling desks and chairs, with students moving freely and talking about their work. Better attendance, class participation and graduation rates. One year later, Barela has watched some of this vision flourish — including new classes and ways of teaching — while other parts never took off.
The president of the University of Southern California, C. L. Max Nikias, resigned on Tuesday, less than a week after hundreds of professors issued a letter demanding that he step aside before classes begin this month.
The university had already pledged to “begin an orderly transition” to find a new president, but it appeared to fast-forward the process on Tuesday, announcing that Mr. Nikias would step down effective immediately.
For Oumou Kanoute, it started as an otherwise sedate afternoon at Smith College — some light reading, a blanket and a late lunch in a common room at the women’s-only liberal arts school in western Massachusetts.
In the fall of 2015, University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer made a surprise announcement to a packed audience at a formal event in Mandel Hall. Flanked by sleek graphics and illuminated by camera flashes, Zimmer said that the University had received a $100 million gift—then the second-largest donation in its history.
The Broward County School Board on Monday asked a judge to hold the South Florida Sun Sentinel and two of its reporters in contempt of court over the publication of a report about the Parkland shooter’s years within the school system.
An alarming pattern of racial segregation has re-emerged in the Boston Public School system over the last two decades, according to a Globe analysis, largely the consequence of steps taken by city and school officials to allow more students to attend schools in their neighborhoods as they did prior to court-ordered busing.
Brittany Wallman and Paula McMahonSouth Florida Sun Sentinel
In the year leading up to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killer Nikolas Cruz was stripped of the therapeutic services disabled students need, leaving him to navigate his schooling as a regular student despite mounds of evidence that he wasn’t.
Nikolas Cruz was an 18-year-old junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., when a spate of disturbing behavior led to a fateful meeting about the future of his schooling.
Education specialists told Mr. Cruz he should transfer to Cross Creek, an alternative school for students with emotional problems where he had thrived in ninth grade. His mother, Lynda Cruz, agreed.
They came from all over Virginia, battling gray weather and buckets of rain, to see the faces of a student-driven movement that shows few signs of stopping.
They came by the hundreds, young people and older ones—at least a third of the attendees were parents, judging by a show of hands—to hear first-person testimonies from the survivors of the mass shooting in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. They came to learn how they might be involved in ending gun violence. In a few cases, they came to protest.
The number of former patients suing USC for allegedly failing to protect them from sexual abuse at a campus health clinic increased to more than 300 this week amid a new push by university faculty to speed the departure of the outgoing president, C.L. Max Nikias.
A major push by New York City to help poor children in public schools learn to read by assigning literacy coaches to their teachers had no impact on second-graders’ progress, according to a study of its first year.
The city Department of Education conducted the evaluation, but its officials said Thursday it was too early to judge the initiative. They said they would strengthen the program while boosting annual funding to $89 million, from $75 million.
Less than 2 percent of school-aged students with disabilities—about 85,000 of them in fall 2016—are enrolled by their parents in private schools, according to records maintained by the federal government.
But the education of those students, including their rights under federal law and the resources available to them, has taken on an outsized importance since Betsy DeVos was appointed U.S. secretary of education under the Trump administration.
In a watershed moment for his administration on education policy, President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, the first legislation Trump’s signed that makes significant changes to federal education law itself.
Now, with the release this summer of a new paperback version of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen contends that his bestselling book has “new significance … owing to detrimental developments in America’s recent public discourse.” By providing students an inadequate history education, Loewen argues, America’s schools breed adults who tend to conflate empirical fact and opinion, and who lack the media literacy necessary to navigate conflicting information.
President Trump signed legislation Tuesday that renews a federal workforce development program, sending $1.2 billion a year to states but with fewer requirements from Washington on how to spend the money and assess the success of programs.
The legislation drew bipartisan support.
The legislation renews the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, the primary federal funding source for career and technical-education programs offered in high schools and after graduation. Typically, the programs combine academic instruction with occupational skills training.
Ryan McKinnon of the Herald Tribune examines child care in Florida, where providers are just scraping by while parents are breaking the bank.
Florida’s child care industry is a case study in market failure — providers are selling their services at fire-sale prices, but it is still too expensive for the consumers. #tellEWAhttps://t.co/sJjLk6bmPs
More than 100 former Ohio State University students have come forward with allegations that a team doctor and professor at the school committed some form of sexual misconduct with them, university officials announced Friday, as the university begins to grapple with the sheer scope of a scandal that continues to grow.
School administrators consider the likelihood of a shooting real enough that some districts are buying active-shooter insurance.
The coverage, also called “active-assailant” insurance, gained traction in the past year, following several mass shootings. Schools use it in hopes of avoiding litigation and offsetting costs for counseling services, crisis management and added security after an attack.
Florida’s child care industry is a case study in market failure — providers are selling their services at fire-sale prices, but it is still too expensive for the consumers. Providers are just scraping by while parents are breaking the bank to pay for child care. Although the issue isn’t isolated to the Sunshine State, child care experts point to a multitude of Florida-specific factors.
Almost 2,400 North Carolina elementary school teachers have failed the math portion of their licensing exams, which puts their careers in jeopardy, since the state hired Pearson publishing company to give the exam in 2013, according to a report presented to the state Board of Education Wednesday.
Failure rates have spiked as schools around the state struggle to find teachers for the youngest children. Education officials are now echoing what frustrated teachers have been saying: The problem may lie with the exams rather than the educators.
John Woodrow Cox and Steven RichThe Washington Post
The gunfire had lasted less than 10 seconds, but now hidden behind locked doors all across the rural campus, teenagers wept and bled and prayed. Police would soon swarm Marshall County High’s hallways on that chilly morning in January, and though the exact number of students who had been shot remained unknown for hours, it didn’t take investigators long to find the boy they believed had pulled the trigger.
Every school day, teachers across the country take attendance. And every year, about 16 percent of students miss at least 15 of those days. So-called “chronic absenteeism” has festered into what the U.S. Department of Education has branded a national crisis.
Several big names in education reform are teaming up to start a new organization designed to change how schools are managed in cities across the U.S. — and they say they’ve already raised $200 million.
The City Fund, as the group is being called, will push cities to expand charter schools and district schools with charter-like autonomy. It represents a big increase in visibility and influence for advocates of the “portfolio model” of running schools, a strategy that’s been adopted by cities like New Orleans, Denver, and Indianapolis.
August 10 – August 16
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
In New Orleans, students who drink from a school water fountain may be exposed to lead, reports Marta Jewson of The Lens.
The Washington Post’s Moriah Balingit examines a new legal strategy to improve literacy instruction in resource-deprived schools.
For Parkland students, recovery comes in many forms, reports WLRN’s Jessica Bakeman.
Colleges, Courts Grapple With The Role Of Companion Animals
Animals are being used in courtrooms to help witnesses testify and on college campuses to deal with students’ stress.
Courts and colleges are struggling to develop consistent policies about these animals.
Courtroom canines are known as facility dogs, and at least seven states have some type of lawallowing their assistance on the witness stand.
Stepping Back From Graduate Programs
Many a liberal arts institution has attempted to diversify revenue streams and student pools by opening graduate programs, but at least one in New York State moved in the opposite direction this summer.
She Was A Teen Mother Who Became Teacher Of The Year. Now, Jahana Hayes Wants To Become Connecticut’s First Black Democratic Member Of Congress
In Waterbury, Conn., where she taught high school history, Jahana Hayes always told her students to never become resigned to the challenging conditions they were raised in. Hayes, who was raised amid drug addiction and became a mother before she graduated high school, understood firsthand her students’ struggles with poverty and broken homes.
“I built my teaching career by telling my students you don’t get to complain here,” said Hayes, who in 2016 was named National Teacher of the Year. “If you see a problem in your community, you go and fix it.”
Jeff Greene Touts Private School In Run For Florida Governor
Billionaire developer Jeff Greene is an unconventional Democrat running an unconventional campaign for Florida governor. So, naturally, his ideas on how to change Florida’s vast public education bureaucracy stem from an unconventional place.
Standing in a former West Palm Beach car dealership that he converted two years ago into a schoolhouse, Greene explains how the future of Florida’s schools lies in shrinking class sizes, replacing letter grades with detailed evaluations and adopting the latest technologies.
Kavanaugh Could Unlock Funding for Religious Education, School Voucher Advocates Say
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a speech last year, gave a strong hint at his views on taxpayer support for religious schools when he praised his “first judicial hero,” Justice William Rehnquist, for determining that the strict wall between church and state “was wrong as a matter of law and history.”
How to Make a Civics Education Stick
How do you teach kids to be active participants in government? Or to tell the difference between real news and fake news?
Do Children Have a Right to Literacy? Attorneys Are Testing That Question.
When Jamarria Hall strode into Osborn High in Detroit his freshman year, the signs of decay were everywhere: buckets in the hallways to catch leaking water, rotting ceiling tiles, vermin that crisscrossed classrooms.
Senators To DeVos On TEACH Grant Debacle: ‘Urgent That These Mistakes Are Fixed’
The U.S. Department of Education is in the midst of a top-to-bottom review of a troubled federal grant program for public school teachers.
Failing the Future
Is the way Pennsylvania funds public education the reason some students are left behind?
Rural Alabama Charter Opens as First Integrated School in Sumter County
At 7:50 on Monday morning, when school started at the University Charter School in Livingston, in west Alabama’s Sumter County, students in kindergarten through eighth grade began a new era, hardly aware of the history they were making.
For the first time, black students and white students are learning side-by-side in integrated public school classrooms. More than half of the school’s 300-plus students are black, while just under half are white.
Armed Educators: An Inside Look at How Texas Trains Its Teachers to Target Shooters
At 12:56 p.m., a single shot rings out at Windermere Elementary School.
Más Estudiantes Latinos Se Gradúan de Secundaria Pero No de la Universidad
Brenda Madrid, una estudiante inmigrante en Nueva York, pensó que su último año en la escuela secundaria, sería el inicio de un futuro lleno de éxitos. Ella se reunió en dos ocasiones con un consejero estudiantil que al enterarse de su estado migratorio, le recomendó inmediatamente que aplicara a un Colegio Comunitario y no a una universidad. Ella, por falta de opciones, siguió su consejo.
Education Dept. Proposes Tossing Gainful-Employment Rule, Which Took Aim at For-Profit Colleges
The U.S. Department of Education has officially proposed repealing the gainful-employment rule, a policy that punished higher-education programs whose graduates accumulated excessive student-loan debt, according to a notice of proposed rulemaking released Friday.
Trauma Lingers for Harvey Survivors Returning to School in Port Arthur
The mid-June clouds stark white and heavy with impending rain, Darby Dugay listened for the splatter of falling drops, noting that the foul weather might delay her basketball practice.
Nearly a year after Hurricane Harvey submerged coastal Port Arthur, the rain still brings the 17-year-old’s heart rate up, especially when water overflows the long-neglected drainage ditches lining the neighborhood’s sidewalks.
New Legal Bills Push UNC’s Tab for Academic Scandal to $21 Million
UNC-Chapel Hill has spent $21 million on legal, public relations and investigative costs related to its long-running academic scandal, bills released Friday show.
The bills from 2016 through this year show the university has spent more than $3.5 million on several law firms involved in successfully defending the university against NCAA allegations and individual lawsuits by former athletes. The university had previously spent nearly $18 million on legal, public relations, investigative and records production costs.
Here’s How Alabama School Officials are Keeping Students Safe
As Alabama’s children return to school, safety is on the minds of many school officials. Districts across the state used the summer months to add security upgrades to their schools and train teachers and school personnel in new ways of keeping students safe.
“There’s more interest in school safety than anything I’ve seen in probably 20 years,” Alabama Superintendent Eric Mackey said.
Back-to-School Shopping for Districts: Armed Guards, Cameras and Metal Detectors
Fortified by fences and patrolled by more armed personnel, schools will open their doors to students for the start of the new year with a heightened focus on security intended to ease fears about deadly campus shootings.
The massacre in Parkland, Fla., one of the most lethal in American history, unnerved school administrators across the country, who devoted the summer to reinforcing buildings and hiring security.
August 3 – August 9
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
Education Week’s Franciso Vara-Orta takes an in-depth look at hate and bias in schools.
A slowdown in charter school growth in California has some advocates worried, report Louis Freedberg and John Fensterwald of EdSource.
For The 74, Mark Keierleber examines the booming business of school security.
Inside the $3 Billion School Security Industry: Companies Market Sophisticated Technology to ‘Harden’ Campuses, but Will It Make Us Safe?
Inside an underground meeting room attached to the U.S. Capitol, past guards and metal detectors, lawmakers and officials from leading security companies discussed a burgeoning threat of mass school shootings and the dire need to “harden” campuses before someone else gets killed.
‘The Lost Education of Horace Tate’ and Desegregation
For 25 years, the Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker has studied and written about the segregated schooling of black children. In her latest book, The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools, Walker tells the little-known story of how black educators in the South—courageously and covertly—laid the groundwork for 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education and weathered its aftermath.
Is Texas Ready To Copy Dallas’ Move To Boost Pay For The Best Teachers?
The state needs a dynamic way to boost teacher pay so Texas can recruit and retain the best educators.
But Texas leaders have fumbled on exactly what to do and how to get there.
On Wednesday, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath once again pointed to Dallas as a model to follow, saying two key DISD efforts have turned around struggling schools by getting the most talented teachers to them — namely by paying them more.
Education Looms Large in the Wisconsin Governor’s Race – The Atlantic
Voters think about a lot of things at the polls: immigration, the economy, health care, gun policy, and—more cynically—party affiliation. But education is an issue that doesn’t typically poll near the top of the list, even though it’s often thought of as a bedrock of society. Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s public-schools chief, and the most likely Democratic candidate to take on Governor Scott Walker in November’s gubernatorial election, is banking on the fact that that’s changing.
A Year Of Personalized Learning: Mistakes, Moving Furniture And Making It Work
Vista High School principal Anthony Barela had a vivid image of what school here could look like after a $10 million grant to reimagine learning: Rolling desks and chairs, with students moving freely and talking about their work. Better attendance, class participation and graduation rates. One year later, Barela has watched some of this vision flourish — including new classes and ways of teaching — while other parts never took off.
U.S.C. President Resigns Amid Pressure to Exit Before School Year
The president of the University of Southern California, C. L. Max Nikias, resigned on Tuesday, less than a week after hundreds of professors issued a letter demanding that he step aside before classes begin this month.
The university had already pledged to “begin an orderly transition” to find a new president, but it appeared to fast-forward the process on Tuesday, announcing that Mr. Nikias would step down effective immediately.
Police Called On Smith College Student Oumou Kanoute for #Livingwhileblack
For Oumou Kanoute, it started as an otherwise sedate afternoon at Smith College — some light reading, a blanket and a late lunch in a common room at the women’s-only liberal arts school in western Massachusetts.
Pearsons, Who Pledged $100 Million to UChicago, Want Their Money Back
In the fall of 2015, University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer made a surprise announcement to a packed audience at a formal event in Mandel Hall. Flanked by sleek graphics and illuminated by camera flashes, Zimmer said that the University had received a $100 million gift—then the second-largest donation in its history.
Swastikas. The N-Word. ‘Go Back To Mexico.’ What Hate Looks Like in Schools
Three swastikas were scrawled on the note found in the girls’ restroom, along with a homophobic comment and a declaration: “I Love Trump.”
School Board Asks Judge to Hold Sun Sentinel In Contempt Over School-Shooter Report
The Broward County School Board on Monday asked a judge to hold the South Florida Sun Sentinel and two of its reporters in contempt of court over the publication of a report about the Parkland shooter’s years within the school system.
Boston’s Schools Are Becoming Resegregated
An alarming pattern of racial segregation has re-emerged in the Boston Public School system over the last two decades, according to a Globe analysis, largely the consequence of steps taken by city and school officials to allow more students to attend schools in their neighborhoods as they did prior to court-ordered busing.
Here’s What Broward Schools Knew About Parkland Shooter — Details Revealed By Mistake
In the year leading up to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killer Nikolas Cruz was stripped of the therapeutic services disabled students need, leaving him to navigate his schooling as a regular student despite mounds of evidence that he wasn’t.
Parkland Shooting Suspect Lost Special-Needs Help at School When He Needed It Most
Nikolas Cruz was an 18-year-old junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., when a spate of disturbing behavior led to a fateful meeting about the future of his schooling.
Education specialists told Mr. Cruz he should transfer to Cross Creek, an alternative school for students with emotional problems where he had thrived in ninth grade. His mother, Lynda Cruz, agreed.
Parkland Students Are Still Going Strong. Their Message to Students: Vote
They came from all over Virginia, battling gray weather and buckets of rain, to see the faces of a student-driven movement that shows few signs of stopping.
They came by the hundreds, young people and older ones—at least a third of the attendees were parents, judging by a show of hands—to hear first-person testimonies from the survivors of the mass shooting in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. They came to learn how they might be involved in ending gun violence. In a few cases, they came to protest.
Number of Patients Suing USC Over Sex Abuse Claims Tops 300 as Faculty Push for Nikias’ Exit
The number of former patients suing USC for allegedly failing to protect them from sexual abuse at a campus health clinic increased to more than 300 this week amid a new push by university faculty to speed the departure of the outgoing president, C.L. Max Nikias.
New York City Study Shows Literacy Coaches Had No Effect on Low-Income Second-Graders
A major push by New York City to help poor children in public schools learn to read by assigning literacy coaches to their teachers had no impact on second-graders’ progress, according to a study of its first year.
The city Department of Education conducted the evaluation, but its officials said Thursday it was too early to judge the initiative. They said they would strengthen the program while boosting annual funding to $89 million, from $75 million.
Summer Melt: Why So Many Poor Kids Get Into College But Don’t Enroll
Every spring, millions of students graduate high school with every intention of attending college.
By the fall, an astounding portion of them never show up to college.
This phenomenon is so common it has a name: “summer melt.” And the effects are stronger for students from a lower socioeconomic background.
How Private Schools and Districts Partner Up on Special Education
Less than 2 percent of school-aged students with disabilities—about 85,000 of them in fall 2016—are enrolled by their parents in private schools, according to records maintained by the federal government.
But the education of those students, including their rights under federal law and the resources available to them, has taken on an outsized importance since Betsy DeVos was appointed U.S. secretary of education under the Trump administration.
Donald Trump Signs First Major Education Policy Bill of His Presidency
In a watershed moment for his administration on education policy, President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, the first legislation Trump’s signed that makes significant changes to federal education law itself.
‘Lies My Teacher Told Me’ and America’s Post-Truth Era
Now, with the release this summer of a new paperback version of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen contends that his bestselling book has “new significance … owing to detrimental developments in America’s recent public discourse.” By providing students an inadequate history education, Loewen argues, America’s schools breed adults who tend to conflate empirical fact and opinion, and who lack the media literacy necessary to navigate conflicting information.
President Trump Signs Bipartisan Technical-Education Bill Into Law
President Trump signed legislation Tuesday that renews a federal workforce development program, sending $1.2 billion a year to states but with fewer requirements from Washington on how to spend the money and assess the success of programs.
The legislation drew bipartisan support.
The legislation renews the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, the primary federal funding source for career and technical-education programs offered in high schools and after graduation. Typically, the programs combine academic instruction with occupational skills training.
July 27 – August 2
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
An analysis by the Palm Beach Post’s Andrew Marra uncovers significant salary declines for veteran teachers even as the cost of living has climbed.
Ryan McKinnon of the Herald Tribune examines child care in Florida, where providers are just scraping by while parents are breaking the bank.
More Than 100 Former Ohio State Students Allege Sexual Misconduct
More than 100 former Ohio State University students have come forward with allegations that a team doctor and professor at the school committed some form of sexual misconduct with them, university officials announced Friday, as the university begins to grapple with the sheer scope of a scandal that continues to grow.
More Schools Are Buying ‘Active-Shooter’ Insurance Policies
School administrators consider the likelihood of a shooting real enough that some districts are buying active-shooter insurance.
The coverage, also called “active-assailant” insurance, gained traction in the past year, following several mass shootings. Schools use it in hopes of avoiding litigation and offsetting costs for counseling services, crisis management and added security after an attack.
The Confounding State Of Child Care in Florida
Florida’s child care industry is a case study in market failure — providers are selling their services at fire-sale prices, but it is still too expensive for the consumers. Providers are just scraping by while parents are breaking the bank to pay for child care. Although the issue isn’t isolated to the Sunshine State, child care experts point to a multitude of Florida-specific factors.
Failure Rate Soars on North Carolina Math Test For Teacher Licenses
Almost 2,400 North Carolina elementary school teachers have failed the math portion of their licensing exams, which puts their careers in jeopardy, since the state hired Pearson publishing company to give the exam in 2013, according to a report presented to the state Board of Education Wednesday.
Failure rates have spiked as schools around the state struggle to find teachers for the youngest children. Education officials are now echoing what frustrated teachers have been saying: The problem may lie with the exams rather than the educators.
School Shootings: Should Parents Be Charged For Failing to Lock Up Guns Used By Their Kids?
The gunfire had lasted less than 10 seconds, but now hidden behind locked doors all across the rural campus, teenagers wept and bled and prayed. Police would soon swarm Marshall County High’s hallways on that chilly morning in January, and though the exact number of students who had been shot remained unknown for hours, it didn’t take investigators long to find the boy they believed had pulled the trigger.
With Nearly 8 Million Students Chronically Absent From School Each Year, 36 States Set Out to Tackle the Problem in New Federal Education Plans. Will It Make a Difference?
Every school day, teachers across the country take attendance. And every year, about 16 percent of students miss at least 15 of those days. So-called “chronic absenteeism” has festered into what the U.S. Department of Education has branded a national crisis.
With Big Names And $200 Million, a New Group Is Forming to Push For The ‘Portfolio Model’
Several big names in education reform are teaming up to start a new organization designed to change how schools are managed in cities across the U.S. — and they say they’ve already raised $200 million.
The City Fund, as the group is being called, will push cities to expand charter schools and district schools with charter-like autonomy. It represents a big increase in visibility and influence for advocates of the “portfolio model” of running schools, a strategy that’s been adopted by cities like New Orleans, Denver, and Indianapolis.