COLLIN BINKLEY and HANNAH FINGERHUTThe Associated Press
Although most young Americans believe in the value of higher
education, many still consider a high school diploma alone to be
enough for success, according to a survey of teens and young
adults by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs
Research.
Immigrants who have lived in the U.S. illegally since childhood
have been at the center of a political tug-of-war for years. But
now, the Supreme Court could decide their fate.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg unveiled a plan
Friday to make tuition at four-year public colleges free for
families earning up to $100,000. The move is part of a package of
new economic policies aimed at boosting the fortunes of middle-
and working-class Americans and positioning Buttigieg as a clear
alternative to more liberal candidates.
Like nearly all teachers in America, Becky Cranson spends her own
money to buy supplies for her students. Working in a rural school
district in Michigan, where 70 percent of her middle school
students come from low-income families, she shells out at least
$1,000 a year for pencils, books, journals, glue sticks, tissues
and much more.
But opening her wallet without reimbursement is only a small part
of what she — and many others in America’s corps of 3.2 million
teachers — do to secure classroom supplies they can’t get from
their schools or from students’ families.
When Steve Thorsett crunched the numbers, things looked
grim.
Mr. Thorsett is the president of Willamette
University, part of a higher education sector grappling with
a sharp decline in enrollment and financial challenges that cry
out not for incremental change, but for radical solutions.
Colleges and universities that fail to adapt risk joining the
average of 11 per year that the bond-rating firm Moody’s says
have shut down in the last three years.
When they marched on the statehouse in Frankfort, Ky., in the
midst of a spring snowstorm and a political firestorm last year,
teachers warned the governor: “We’ll remember in November.”
Nearly 20 months later, they appeared to have delivered on that
promise, helping Democrat Andy Beshear receive about 5,100 more
votes than Republican incumbent Matt Bevin in the Kentucky
governor’s race. It is a state President Trump carried by 30
points in 2016.
Five years after Michigan switched Flint’s water supply to
the contaminated Flint River from Lake Huron, the city’s lead
crisis has migrated from its homes to its schools, where
neurological and behavioral problems — real or feared —
among students are threatening to overwhelm the
education system.
District leaders propose a facilities bond to cover the cost of generators and backup batteries, reports Diana Lambert for EdSource. The goal? Avoid more school closures in California.
Colleges rise in national rankings and reputation when they show
data suggesting they are more selective. They can do that by
rejecting more applicants, whether or not those candidates ever
stood a chance. Some applicants, in effect, become unknowing
pawns.
Feeding this dynamic is the College Board, the New York nonprofit
that owns the SAT, a test designed to level the
college-admissions playing field.
The board is using the SAT as the foundation for another
business: selling test-takers’ names and personal information to
universities.
Cable news might still be fixated on the 2020 primaries, but a
good number of ballots are about to be cast across the country
this week in an “off-year election” with major implications for
classrooms and education policy.
The auditorium at the College of New Jersey was filled with
hundreds of fraternity and sorority members, on a night during
Greek Week. The event had sounded all too familiar to many: Go
hear some adults tell you about the dangers of hazing. Again.
But their chatter had died away and their phones were in their
pockets as Evelyn and Jim Piazza showed them photos of their
tall, grinning son and told them how, after a gantlet of drinks
and a headfirst fall down a flight of stairs at his Pennsylvania
State University fraternity house, Tim Piazza was put in an
ambulance, alone.
Parents and students trickled into the Muhlenberg County High
School gym on a hot Saturday night as the sounds of cheers and a
referee’s whistle carried from an athletic field nearby. Inside
the “Home of the Mustangs,” Friends of NRA was raffling off guns:
semiautomatic rifles and handguns, guns with high-capacity
magazines and pump-action shotguns.
In part 3 of a series, EWA Reporting Fellow Cory McCoy of the Tyler Morning Telegraph highlights the financial burdens students face other than tuition and fees.
Promise programs are a step in the right direction toward making college affordable, but they aren’t the solution. For most students, they’ll only cover 1/4 of costs at best. The final article of my fellow project, with a video explainer coming.#TellEWAhttps://t.co/GRyZybLkEZ
For The 74, Laura Mckenna reports on the lack of funds to address many aging school buildings in the U.S. and the potential effects on student achievement.
My latest... Schools Have Lost $16B in Capital Funds Since the Great Recession. Those Buildings Are in Trouble — & That Means Problems for Students @The74https://t.co/bCcNq0M4uH#tellewa
The average eighth-grade reading score on a nationally
representative test declined among public school students in more
than half of the states, according to data released Wednesday by
the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of
the Education Department.
The dismal results were part of the release of the National
Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “nation’s report
card.” The test assesses a sample of fourth- and eighth-grade
students — more than 290,000 in each subject in 2019 — every
other year.
For months, the Orange County, N.C., school board wrestled with
pressure to ban students from wearing the Confederate flag symbol
on school grounds. Then came the deadly white supremacist rally
in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
Within days, the board banned Confederate flag clothing and
formed a task force that would labor for two years to write a new
racial equity policy.
Nearly 1 million low-income students would lose
automatic access to free school lunches under a proposal
from President Donald Trump’s administration that aims to
limit the number of people receiving federal food stamps.
And advocates say even more could lose free meals as the
implications of the cuts ripple across low-income schools.
But the Trump administration says those concerns are overblown.
New data from a government watchdog shows that 17 states operated
22 tax-credit scholarship programs as of January 2019,
and that some of those programs provided inaccurate information
on the rights of students with disabilities, despite previous
warnings.
Those programs—which provide tax credits in exchange for
contributions to scholarship organizations that allow students to
attend private schools— received over $1.1 billion in
contributions, providing awards to about 300,000 students in
2017, says a new report from the Government Accountability
Office.
A federal judge on Thursday fined Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
for contempt of court, ruling that she had violated an order to
stop collecting on loans owed by students from a now-defunct
for-profit chain of colleges.
At Chalmette High, located in a conservative Louisiana parish,
the students in Mr. Dier’s class recently confronted the merits
of the case against Mr. Trump, who stands accused of pressuring
Ukraine to investigate his chief Democratic rival, Joseph R.
Biden Jr. Mr. Dier saw the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry
against Mr. Trump as an opportunity: a real-time lesson in civics
and political science for his students.
Yuliana Quintana worries she won’t succeed in college because she
didn’t have access to lab equipment, Advanced Placement classes,
and other resources during her high school years.
Quintana, 19, was last year’s valedictorian of her high school in
DePue, a tiny village about 50 miles north of Peoria.
Quintana’s school district, DePue Community Unit School District
103, is one of the poorest districts in Illinois.
For The Dallas Morning News, Corbett Smith and Eva-Marie Ayala report on the transformation of a sports arena into makeshift classrooms after a tornado damaged local schools.
Teachers in the Park County Re-2 district based in Fairplay are
returning to work Thursday with neither the professional
agreement nor the pay raises they sought when they started their
strike on Oct. 14.
This marks the end of the longest teacher strike in Colorado in
decades and the first in recent years to end without any
meaningful concessions from the district. Teachers did not have a
strike fund when they walked off the job, and district officials
were steadfast in refusing to discuss salaries for the current
school year, as union members wanted.
At Austin Community College, civics is an unwritten part of the
curriculum — so much so that for years the school has tapped its
own funds to set up temporary early-voting sites on nine of
its 11 campuses.
Dana Goldstein and Thomas KaplanThe New York Times
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had released dozens of
policy plans before tackling K-12 education, making her the last
leading Democratic primary contender to do so.
Katherine Mangan The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Having to tell potential sources that I might have to report
everything they say to the Title IX office if they continue
talking to me is not a realistic way to report,” she wrote in an
email to The Chronicle. “This is a time institutions should be
doing a better job of listening, and not shutting down
conversation.”
It’s an article of faith in this Cleveland suburb: If any place
can navigate the complex issues of race in America, it’s Shaker
Heights. Sixty years ago, black and white families came together
to create and maintain integrated neighborhoods. The school
district began voluntary busing in 1970, and boundary lines were
drawn to make schools more integrated. Student groups dedicated
themselves to black achievement, race relations and cross-racial
friendship.
A city of just 5,500 residents in East Texas might not be the
first place people would think of when looking to pilot a program
that could change the college landscape, but it’s happening in
Rusk.
When the Rusk promise launched in 2014, it was the first
community promise initiative in the state. In just five years,
the results already are creating change in the community.
Substance abuse and mental health problems surged following last
year’s deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School in Parkland, Fla., while test scores tanked. More kids are
said to be anxious, depressed and cutting school.
For EdSurge, Rebecca Koenig examines how the D.C. Central Detention Facility is turning inmates into students under the guidance of a former public school teacher.
“What if you treated everyone as if this were an academic campus?” @becky_koenig reports from a detention facility where inmates watch TED Talks, take college courses, and prepare to make the most of their next chance at life. https://t.co/wNLjNMqn6l#tellEWA#edtech#edchat
On a Monday morning in April 2017, students at Sage Hill School
gathered in its artificial-turf quadrangle, known as the Town
Square, to celebrate seniors who were heading to college as
recruited athletes. The 10 honorees lined up behind an archway
adorned with balloons. One by one, they stepped forward as their
sports and destinations were announced. Patricia Merz, the head
of the private high school in Newport Coast, California, placed a
lei in the appropriate college’s colors around each student’s
neck.
Educators and community activists in Little Rock are mobilizing
to push Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the State Board of Education to
reconsider a plan for the city’s public schools that they say
will establish separate governing structures for majority white
schools and majority black schools.
Suicide, long thought of something that affected other racial and
ethnic groups, is fast becoming an epidemic in black communities,
particularly among school-age children.
A recent study in the Journal of Community
Health showed that suicide rates among black girls ages
13-19 nearly doubled from 2001 to 2017. For black boys in the
same age group, over the same period, rates rose 60 percent.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been threatened with the
possibility of jail after a judge deemed she was violating a
court order for continuing to collect student debts on a
now-defunct school.
Jerard Briscoe is away at school. Or at least, that’s what he
tells his kids.
It’s a plausible story. He studies for GED math exams. He reads
e-books and takes courses using a tablet computer. He even wears
a uniform: an orange jumpsuit and white Velcro sneakers.
“If you’re at college, you can’t go home everyday anyway. I just
put my mindset like I’m really at school,” he says. “So when I
tell my kids that, I’m lying a little bit, but I’m not really
lying, because I am at school.”
This school year, a dozen high school students in Elkhart County
are testing out a new apprenticeship model that went from
Colorado to New York City, and now Indiana. Student apprentices
will work part-time at local companies and get paid. Organizers
hope the program will help connect students with companies that
say they can’t find enough skilled workers.
For almost a century, researchers have argued over the question.
Most of the disagreement has centered on the very beginning
stages of the reading process, when young children are first
starting to figure out how to decipher words on a page.
In a new investigation Jessica Calefati, Jesenia De Moya Correa and Kristen A. Graham of the Philadelphia Inquirer look at troubling discrepancies in student attendance records that could threaten per-pupil funding for one of the city’s struggling high schools.
The decline in the share of middle-class college students has prompted schools to offer special scholarships, reports Jon Marcus for The Hechinger Report.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected claims that Harvard had
discriminated against Asian-Americans in admissions, saying that
the university had a right to choose a diverse class.
Summer is a chance for children and youth to continue
developing, but for those living in disadvantaged communities,
summertime experiences can lead to worse health, social,
emotional, academic, and safety outcomes, says a new report from
the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
In 2012, almost all of Sci Academy’s seniors were accepted at
college; seven years later, 65 percent had dropped out.
Newspapers had reported that nearly everyone in Williams’s
graduating class at Sci Academy in New Orleans had been accepted
to college, as if they were a group moving toward one
unprecedented future together.
For Education Week, Arianna Prothero and Denise R. Superville report on how districts are waking up to the idea that ensuring safety at school-sponsored events after hours and off campus deserves heightened attention.
The Texas Education Agency in 2004 imposed an arbitrary, illegal
cap on the number of students that schools could deem eligible
for special education.
Since then, advocates estimate, some 250,000 children a year have
ended up unable to get schools or districts to acknowledge
their needs, much less provide appropriate instruction. Few
advocates and even fewer parents understood that an official
policy, presumably imposed to cut costs, was driving those
refusals.
Those children, some of whom crossed the U.S.-Mexico border
alone, have fueled a bitter debate about immigration in
Worthington, a community of 13,000 that has received more
unaccompanied minors per capita than almost anywhere in the
country, according to data from the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR).
For Chalkbeat, Dylan Peers McCoy uncovers how Indiana’s lax regulation of home schooling and its method for calculating graduation rates are masking the extent of many schools’ dropout problems.
Arizona residents aren’t advancing to training and education after high school, raising concerns about the consequences for the state’s economy and quality of life, reports Rachel Leingang for The Arizona Republic.
Hey, #tellEWA: Check out the @azcentral series on Arizona's lagging educational attainment, why we're falling behind and what could be done about it! The main story is here: https://t.co/E9F2aHVkWh
College is expensive, so what’s the best way to help more
Americans afford a degree? One team of researchers has a
surprising answer. The most cost-effective way to increase the
number of Americans who get a four-year degree, they found, is to
increase tax-payer spending at all public colleges and eliminate
tuition for students from families with incomes under $60,000 a
year.
It was a tweet to the president pleading for him to do “anything
you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth.”
The high school teacher, who went on to ask for help in “actively
investigating and removing the illegals that are in public school
system,” now awaits a decision on whether or not she can keep her
job.
But the tweets of Georgia Clark pose a larger question for
educators as a divisive presidential election nears: When do
teachers cross the free-speech line?
Poll: Many Youths Say High School Diploma Is Enough
Although most young Americans believe in the value of higher education, many still consider a high school diploma alone to be enough for success, according to a survey of teens and young adults by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
A Reckoning for DACA: With Possible Deportation of Dreamers in the Balance Tuesday at the Supreme Court, Education Groups Urge Justices to Protect Students and Teachers
Immigrants who have lived in the U.S. illegally since childhood have been at the center of a political tug-of-war for years. But now, the Supreme Court could decide their fate.
Pete Buttigieg Proposes Free College for Americans Earning Under $100,000 in His New Economic Plan
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg unveiled a plan Friday to make tuition at four-year public colleges free for families earning up to $100,000. The move is part of a package of new economic policies aimed at boosting the fortunes of middle- and working-class Americans and positioning Buttigieg as a clear alternative to more liberal candidates.
‘I Am a Scavenger’: The Desperate Things Teachers Do to Get the Classroom Supplies They Need
Like nearly all teachers in America, Becky Cranson spends her own money to buy supplies for her students. Working in a rural school district in Michigan, where 70 percent of her middle school students come from low-income families, she shells out at least $1,000 a year for pencils, books, journals, glue sticks, tissues and much more.
But opening her wallet without reimbursement is only a small part of what she — and many others in America’s corps of 3.2 million teachers — do to secure classroom supplies they can’t get from their schools or from students’ families.
Radical Survival Strategies for Struggling Colleges
When Steve Thorsett crunched the numbers, things looked grim.
Mr. Thorsett is the president of Willamette University, part of a higher education sector grappling with a sharp decline in enrollment and financial challenges that cry out not for incremental change, but for radical solutions. Colleges and universities that fail to adapt risk joining the average of 11 per year that the bond-rating firm Moody’s says have shut down in the last three years.
In a Kentucky Election, Aggrieved Teachers Flex Their Muscles
When they marched on the statehouse in Frankfort, Ky., in the midst of a spring snowstorm and a political firestorm last year, teachers warned the governor: “We’ll remember in November.”
Nearly 20 months later, they appeared to have delivered on that promise, helping Democrat Andy Beshear receive about 5,100 more votes than Republican incumbent Matt Bevin in the Kentucky governor’s race. It is a state President Trump carried by 30 points in 2016.
Flint’s Children Suffer in Class After Years of Drinking the Lead-Poisoned Water
Five years after Michigan switched Flint’s water supply to the contaminated Flint River from Lake Huron, the city’s lead crisis has migrated from its homes to its schools, where neurological and behavioral problems — real or feared — among students are threatening to overwhelm the education system.
#tellEWA Member Stories (Nov. 1 – 7)
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
District leaders propose a facilities bond to cover the cost of generators and backup batteries, reports Diana Lambert for EdSource. The goal? Avoid more school closures in California.
The 74’s Taylor Swaak covers how a Manhattan school is using The New York Time’s 1619 Project to reframe how slavery is taught.
For Sale: SAT-Takers’ Names. Colleges Buy Student Data and Boost Exclusivity
Colleges rise in national rankings and reputation when they show data suggesting they are more selective. They can do that by rejecting more applicants, whether or not those candidates ever stood a chance. Some applicants, in effect, become unknowing pawns.
Feeding this dynamic is the College Board, the New York nonprofit that owns the SAT, a test designed to level the college-admissions playing field.
The board is using the SAT as the foundation for another business: selling test-takers’ names and personal information to universities.
2019 Election Preview: 5 Big ‘Off-Year’ Races to Watch With Major Implications for Schools, Students and Education Policy
The 74
Cable news might still be fixated on the 2020 primaries, but a good number of ballots are about to be cast across the country this week in an “off-year election” with major implications for classrooms and education policy.
‘Hit them in their heart’: These Parents Lost Kids to Hazing. They’re Trying to Make Sure it Doesn’t Happen Again.
Susan Svrluga
The auditorium at the College of New Jersey was filled with hundreds of fraternity and sorority members, on a night during Greek Week. The event had sounded all too familiar to many: Go hear some adults tell you about the dangers of hazing. Again.
But their chatter had died away and their phones were in their pockets as Evelyn and Jim Piazza showed them photos of their tall, grinning son and told them how, after a gantlet of drinks and a headfirst fall down a flight of stairs at his Pennsylvania State University fraternity house, Tim Piazza was put in an ambulance, alone.
The NRA Foundation is Raising Money by Auctioning Off Guns in Schools — to the Dismay of Some Parents
Beth Reinhard and Neena Satija
Parents and students trickled into the Muhlenberg County High School gym on a hot Saturday night as the sounds of cheers and a referee’s whistle carried from an athletic field nearby. Inside the “Home of the Mustangs,” Friends of NRA was raffling off guns: semiautomatic rifles and handguns, guns with high-capacity magazines and pump-action shotguns.
#tellEWA Member Stories (Oct. 25 – 31)
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
In part 3 of a series, EWA Reporting Fellow Cory McCoy of the Tyler Morning Telegraph highlights the financial burdens students face other than tuition and fees.
For The 74, Laura Mckenna reports on the lack of funds to address many aging school buildings in the U.S. and the potential effects on student achievement.
‘No Progress’ Seen in Reading or Math on Nation’s Report Card
The latest results of the tests known as the Nation’s Report Card offer a mostly grim view of academic progress in U.S. schools.
Reading Scores on National Exam Decline in Half the States
The average eighth-grade reading score on a nationally representative test declined among public school students in more than half of the states, according to data released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the Education Department.
The dismal results were part of the release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “nation’s report card.” The test assesses a sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students — more than 290,000 in each subject in 2019 — every other year.
The Challenging, Often Isolating Work of School District Chief Equity Officers
For months, the Orange County, N.C., school board wrestled with pressure to ban students from wearing the Confederate flag symbol on school grounds. Then came the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
Within days, the board banned Confederate flag clothing and formed a task force that would labor for two years to write a new racial equity policy.
School Lunch: Trump Food Stamp Limit Could End Free Food for Some Kids
Erin Richards
Nearly 1 million low-income students would lose automatic access to free school lunches under a proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration that aims to limit the number of people receiving federal food stamps.
And advocates say even more could lose free meals as the implications of the cuts ripple across low-income schools. But the Trump administration says those concerns are overblown.
GAO Finds Uneven Landscape of State Rules for Tax-Credit Scholarships – Politics K-12
Evie Blad
New data from a government watchdog shows that 17 states operated 22 tax-credit scholarship programs as of January 2019, and that some of those programs provided inaccurate information on the rights of students with disabilities, despite previous warnings.
Those programs—which provide tax credits in exchange for contributions to scholarship organizations that allow students to attend private schools— received over $1.1 billion in contributions, providing awards to about 300,000 students in 2017, says a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
Betsy DeVos Is Held in Contempt Over Judge’s Order on Loan Collection
Erica L. Green and Stacy Cowley
A federal judge on Thursday fined Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for contempt of court, ruling that she had violated an order to stop collecting on loans owed by students from a now-defunct for-profit chain of colleges.
‘Centrism Is Canceled’: High Schoolers Debate the Impeachment Inquiry
Audra D. S. Burch
At Chalmette High, located in a conservative Louisiana parish, the students in Mr. Dier’s class recently confronted the merits of the case against Mr. Trump, who stands accused of pressuring Ukraine to investigate his chief Democratic rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Dier saw the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry against Mr. Trump as an opportunity: a real-time lesson in civics and political science for his students.
‘Critically Divisive Lines:’ Why Inequity Persists In Illinois Schools
Yuliana Quintana worries she won’t succeed in college because she didn’t have access to lab equipment, Advanced Placement classes, and other resources during her high school years.
Quintana, 19, was last year’s valedictorian of her high school in DePue, a tiny village about 50 miles north of Peoria.
Quintana’s school district, DePue Community Unit School District 103, is one of the poorest districts in Illinois.
#tellEWA Member Stories (Oct. 18 – 24)
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For The Dallas Morning News, Corbett Smith and Eva-Marie Ayala report on the transformation of a sports arena into makeshift classrooms after a tornado damaged local schools.
HBCUs are struggling to survive in an age of competition for African-American students, reports Delece Smith-Barrow for The New York Times.
Teachers In Park County End Strike Without Pay Raises, Contract
Teachers in the Park County Re-2 district based in Fairplay are returning to work Thursday with neither the professional agreement nor the pay raises they sought when they started their strike on Oct. 14.
This marks the end of the longest teacher strike in Colorado in decades and the first in recent years to end without any meaningful concessions from the district. Teachers did not have a strike fund when they walked off the job, and district officials were steadfast in refusing to discuss salaries for the current school year, as union members wanted.
The Student Vote Is Surging. So Are Efforts to Suppress It.
At Austin Community College, civics is an unwritten part of the curriculum — so much so that for years the school has tapped its own funds to set up temporary early-voting sites on nine of its 11 campuses.
Warren’s Education Plan Promises Billions for Low-Income Schools and Desegregation
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had released dozens of policy plans before tackling K-12 education, making her the last leading Democratic primary contender to do so.
What Happens When Confidentiality in Sexual-Assault Reporting Is No Longer an Option?
“Having to tell potential sources that I might have to report everything they say to the Title IX office if they continue talking to me is not a realistic way to report,” she wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “This is a time institutions should be doing a better job of listening, and not shutting down conversation.”
#tellEWA Member Stories (Oct. 11 – 17)
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
The Hechinger Report’s Jon Marcus reports on the business strategies some colleges are employing in an effort to survive.
For The 74, Mark Keierleber reports on a Florida school district’s effort to create its own police department in a post-Parkland experiment.
Many questions arise as three schools are eligible to leave Tennessee’s turnaround district for the first time, reports Caroline Bauman for Chalkbeat.
Shaker Heights has Tried to Tackle Race for 60 Years. What if Trying isn’t Enough?
Laura Meckler
It’s an article of faith in this Cleveland suburb: If any place can navigate the complex issues of race in America, it’s Shaker Heights. Sixty years ago, black and white families came together to create and maintain integrated neighborhoods. The school district began voluntary busing in 1970, and boundary lines were drawn to make schools more integrated. Student groups dedicated themselves to black achievement, race relations and cross-racial friendship.
Promises Kept: How a Scholarship Program Is Serving as a Model for Community Change
Cory McCoy
A city of just 5,500 residents in East Texas might not be the first place people would think of when looking to pilot a program that could change the college landscape, but it’s happening in Rusk.
When the Rusk promise launched in 2014, it was the first community promise initiative in the state. In just five years, the results already are creating change in the community.
Parkland And Sante Fe Schools Disclose Devastating After-Effects Of Shootings
Substance abuse and mental health problems surged following last year’s deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., while test scores tanked. More kids are said to be anxious, depressed and cutting school.
#tellEWA Member Stories (Oct. 4 – 10)
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
Education Week’s Stephen Sawchuk reports on the challenges civics teachers must navigate in discussing the impeachment process with students.
For EdSurge, Rebecca Koenig examines how the D.C. Central Detention Facility is turning inmates into students under the guidance of a former public school teacher.
An Unseen Victim of the College Admissions Scandal: The High School Tennis Champion Aced Out by a Billionaire Family
On a Monday morning in April 2017, students at Sage Hill School gathered in its artificial-turf quadrangle, known as the Town Square, to celebrate seniors who were heading to college as recruited athletes. The 10 honorees lined up behind an archway adorned with balloons. One by one, they stepped forward as their sports and destinations were announced. Patricia Merz, the head of the private high school in Newport Coast, California, placed a lei in the appropriate college’s colors around each student’s neck.
Community Leaders Fight Plan for Little Rock Schools
Educators and community activists in Little Rock are mobilizing to push Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the State Board of Education to reconsider a plan for the city’s public schools that they say will establish separate governing structures for majority white schools and majority black schools.
Suicide Is Growing Health Crisis For African American Youth
Suicide, long thought of something that affected other racial and ethnic groups, is fast becoming an epidemic in black communities, particularly among school-age children.
A recent study in the Journal of Community Health showed that suicide rates among black girls ages 13-19 nearly doubled from 2001 to 2017. For black boys in the same age group, over the same period, rates rose 60 percent.
Betsy DeVos Could Face Jail After Judge Rules She Violated 2018 Order on Student Loans
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been threatened with the possibility of jail after a judge deemed she was violating a court order for continuing to collect student debts on a now-defunct school.
In DC, Teachers Run the Jail. It’s Turning Inmates Into Students.
Jerard Briscoe is away at school. Or at least, that’s what he tells his kids.
It’s a plausible story. He studies for GED math exams. He reads e-books and takes courses using a tablet computer. He even wears a uniform: an orange jumpsuit and white Velcro sneakers.
“If you’re at college, you can’t go home everyday anyway. I just put my mindset like I’m really at school,” he says. “So when I tell my kids that, I’m lying a little bit, but I’m not really lying, because I am at school.”
He thinks for a beat.
“Alternative school.”
Elkhart County Tests A New Apprenticeship Model for High Schoolers
This school year, a dozen high school students in Elkhart County are testing out a new apprenticeship model that went from Colorado to New York City, and now Indiana. Student apprentices will work part-time at local companies and get paid. Organizers hope the program will help connect students with companies that say they can’t find enough skilled workers.
How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Science Says
How do children learn to read?
For almost a century, researchers have argued over the question. Most of the disagreement has centered on the very beginning stages of the reading process, when young children are first starting to figure out how to decipher words on a page.
#tellEWA Member Stories (Sept. 27 – Oct. 3)
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
In a new investigation Jessica Calefati, Jesenia De Moya Correa and Kristen A. Graham of the Philadelphia Inquirer look at troubling discrepancies in student attendance records that could threaten per-pupil funding for one of the city’s struggling high schools.
The decline in the share of middle-class college students has prompted schools to offer special scholarships, reports Jon Marcus for The Hechinger Report.
Harvard Admissions Process Does Not Discriminate Against Asian-Americans, Judge Rules
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected claims that Harvard had discriminated against Asian-Americans in admissions, saying that the university had a right to choose a diverse class.
Summer Offers Opportunities for Social and Academic Growth, But Can Also Put Disadvantaged Children at Risk
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
Summer is a chance for children and youth to continue developing, but for those living in disadvantaged communities, summertime experiences can lead to worse health, social, emotional, academic, and safety outcomes, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Nearly all the Seniors at This Charter School Went to College. Only 6 out of 52 Finished on Time.
Casey Parks
In 2012, almost all of Sci Academy’s seniors were accepted at college; seven years later, 65 percent had dropped out.
Newspapers had reported that nearly everyone in Williams’s graduating class at Sci Academy in New Orleans had been accepted to college, as if they were a group moving toward one unprecedented future together.
Sept. 20 – 26
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For Education Week, Arianna Prothero and Denise R. Superville report on how districts are waking up to the idea that ensuring safety at school-sponsored events after hours and off campus deserves heightened attention.
250,000 Kids. $277 Million in Fines. It’s Been 3 Years Since Feds Ordered a Special Ed Reboot in Texas — Why Are Students Still Being Denied?
The Texas Education Agency in 2004 imposed an arbitrary, illegal cap on the number of students that schools could deem eligible for special education.
Since then, advocates estimate, some 250,000 children a year have ended up unable to get schools or districts to acknowledge their needs, much less provide appropriate instruction. Few advocates and even fewer parents understood that an official policy, presumably imposed to cut costs, was driving those refusals.
Undocumented Immigrant Kids Fill Worthington, Minnesota’s Schools. Their Bus Driver Is Leading the Funding Backlash.
Those children, some of whom crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone, have fueled a bitter debate about immigration in Worthington, a community of 13,000 that has received more unaccompanied minors per capita than almost anywhere in the country, according to data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
Sept. 13 – 19
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For Chalkbeat, Dylan Peers McCoy uncovers how Indiana’s lax regulation of home schooling and its method for calculating graduation rates are masking the extent of many schools’ dropout problems.
Arizona residents aren’t advancing to training and education after high school, raising concerns about the consequences for the state’s economy and quality of life, reports Rachel Leingang for The Arizona Republic.
Economists Find Free Community Colleges Can Backfire
College is expensive, so what’s the best way to help more Americans afford a degree? One team of researchers has a surprising answer. The most cost-effective way to increase the number of Americans who get a four-year degree, they found, is to increase tax-payer spending at all public colleges and eliminate tuition for students from families with incomes under $60,000 a year.
Do Texas Teachers Have The Right To Free Speech? Anti-immigration Tweets Have One Educator’s Fate In Limbo
It was a tweet to the president pleading for him to do “anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth.”
The high school teacher, who went on to ask for help in “actively investigating and removing the illegals that are in public school system,” now awaits a decision on whether or not she can keep her job.
But the tweets of Georgia Clark pose a larger question for educators as a divisive presidential election nears: When do teachers cross the free-speech line?
In short, it’s a complicated balancing act.