Going into debt to expand out of state could put the brakes on Basis Charter Schools Inc. growing in Arizona as the high-performing academic chain lost $11.6 million in fiscal 2018.
Rio Lacanlale and Amelia Pak-HarveyLas Vegas Review-Journal
Thousands of records examined by the Las Vegas Review-Journal show a yearslong history of abuse and neglect allegations at Northwest Academy, a private boarding school for at-risk youth.
In the months before the shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch, some parents raised concerns about bullying and inadequate security, reports Jenny Brundin for Colorado Public Radio.
STORY: "There was really no sense of security.” / "A perfect storm."/ "The safety and well-being of our students and staff is our highest priority.” STEM School Parents Warned The District Of Their Security Concerns Months Before Shooting https://t.co/MSR4ZUWmTK#TellEWA#edcolopic.twitter.com/lOynOI7Y1p
The two school shootings in as many weeks have prompted officials to discuss the risk of students confronting active shooters, writes Tawnell Hobbs for The Wall Street Journal.
Should schools keep teaching students to confront shooters? “They can sit there and become victims, or they can do something and become a hero,” said one provider of active-shooter training. #schoolsafety#tellewahttps://t.co/MDL2z7VAF0
By the time the last student walked past the open casket, hundreds of notes were piled inside, bits of pain the mourners hoped to bury.
The casket was real, but the funeral was symbolic, staged at a west-side Atlanta high school surrounded by poverty. It began with gospel music blasting through the gym. A pastor preached redemption and self-worth. Grieving mothers remembered their teenage sons, whose real funerals were just last year.
Top lawmakers carve out millions of dollars for handpicked education vendors and pet projects each year, bypassing state bid laws and steering money to companies that know the right people or hire the right lobbyists.
A Clarion Ledger analysis of education appropriations for the last four years uncovered millions of dollars in earmarks for select vendors — most of them represented by three lobbying firms. In at least four cases, key lawmakers received campaign contributions from vendors who received those earmarks.
Detroit Free Press higher education reporter David Jesse was honored as the top education reporter in the country for 2018 by the Education Writers Association.
Jesse was recognized for his coverage of the Larry Nassar scandal at Michigan State University and work he did with Free Press investigative reporter Matthew Dolan on the University of Michigan’s endowment.
EWA — made up of the nation’s education journalists — presented Jesse with the award at its annual conference earlier this week.
Betsy DeVos hinted Monday that should President Donald Trump get re-elected in 2020 that she might not serve as education secretary during his second term.
“I’m not sure my husband would be OK with that,” said DeVos of her husband, Dick DeVos, a former Michigan gubernatorial candidate, after hesitating before delivering her response.
Leaky roofs. Corroded pipes. Faulty fire alarm systems. Detroit’s school buildings are broken, but the district lacks the resources to fix them, reports Jennifer Chambers for The Detroit News.
Continuing the wave of teacher activism that began last year, Oregon educators are poised to walk out of their classrooms next week, writes Natalie Pate for the Statesman Journal in Salem.
It’s rare for the parents of students with disabilities to prevail in legal battles against Maryland school districts. In the past five years, they’ve lost more than 85 percent of the time, state education department documents show, even after investing tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours in pursuit of a better education for their children.
Advocates, families and attorneys say the trend is alarming and discourages people from fighting for the rights kids are guaranteed under federal law.
Nearly 80 students congregated on Monday in the living room of Swarthmore College’s Phi Psi fraternity house. Plastered on one wall was a banner featuring the logo of Natural Light beer.
But the students weren’t there to party. For the past three days, they had been occupying the house as part of an extensive protest against the college’s two fraternities.
Anthony Ramirez worried about how the admissions officers at his dream school, the University of Southern California, would judge him. His home lies a short drive from the school, but in his neighborhood, there are far more high school dropouts than college graduates.
Sabika Sheikh, a Muslim exchange student from Pakistan with dreams of changing the world, struck up an unlikely friendship with an evangelical Christian girl. The two became inseparable—until the day a fellow student opened fire.
In a three-part series for KNKX, Ashley Gross examines how Washington state’s graduation rates exclude many students who are most at risk of dropping out.
As Colorado considers a bill to encourage more students to take advanced courses, Colorado Public Radio’s Jenny Brundin finds that many students and schools aren’t waiting for official action.
Max Eden didn’t even want to read about Parkland. He saw the news on Valentine’s Day, after a dinner date with his girlfriend at a little French place in Washington, D.C., taking an Uber home. There was the gut-punch—“oh shit, another school shooting”—then the queasy afterthought that none of this hits as hard as it used to. He knew what would follow. For a few angry weeks, Democrats would demand gun control and Republicans would call for arming teachers. He decided he’d sit it out this time, ignore the news as much as possible.
Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on Monday unveiled a sweeping proposal to erase student loan debt for millions of Americans and make public college free for millions more, a plan that could distinguish her from the rest of the Democratic field.
The seed of rebellion was planted in classrooms. It grew in kitchens and living rooms, in conversations between students and their parents.
It culminated when Collin Winter, 14, an eighth grader in McPherson, Kan., joined a classroom walkout in January. In the nearby town of Wellington, high schoolers staged a sit-in. Their parents organized in living rooms, at churches and in the back of machine repair shops. They showed up en masse to school board meetings. In neighborhoods with no political yard signs, homemade signs with dark red slash marks suddenly popped up.
A new report shows wealthy school districts are increasingly splitting from poorer, more racially diverse ones, reports Emmanuel Felton for The Hechinger Report.
The lack of diversity on one North Texas school district’s board is the subject of a voting rights lawsuit filed this week, reports Eva-Marie Ayala for The Dallas Morning News.
Frisco is one of the few places in Texas where Asians makeup a majority of students on some campuses. But the school board is not diverse. A lawsuit aims to change that. #TellEWAhttps://t.co/1yGR2haqHf
As 3 p.m. approached on Monday, the editors of The Eagle Eye student newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., huddled around their adviser’s desk for the announcement of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes.
They watched not as journalism groupies, but as award contenders.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on measures to harden public schools in an attempt to make students safer from gun violence, but a new report says there is no evidence those measures have worked. Instead, it says, they have created “a false sense of security.”
A series of stories this week from education reporters describe the challenges some places face in attracting and keeping teachers. For USA Today, Erin Richards explains how soaring housing prices are fueling a chronic teacher shortage in Hawaii.
In response to #tellEWA: Me and my @USATODAY colleagues are working on another big piece about teacher salaries and affordability, but for now, here's what's happening out in 'paradise:' https://t.co/snGiDJDZmf
In Colorado, officials are trying a novel strategy to attract teachers to rural communities. Colorado Public Radio’s Jenny Brundin reports on the “rural immersion” program.
When it came time for Kristina and Jason Salguero to send their son Austin to daycare, they were shocked to learn that it could cost as much as it would to send him to college.
They enrolled Austin, but decided to put off their plans to have a second child. “It’s like they don’t want us to have children,” Kristina says.
This led her to write to WAMU’s What’s With Washington. “Why is daycare so expensive in the D.C. area, particularly in Montgomery County?” she asked.
Bruising political fights are usual business in Becky Debowski’s eighth-grade social studies classroom. From a model Constitutional Convention to a bare-knuckle debate in Congress over slavery, she regularly has students assume roles of partisans throughout American history, like Abraham Lincoln and John C. Calhoun.
After the exercises, the class comes back together to debate whether the nation lived up to what the state of Michigan calls “core democratic values,” such as equality, liberty and diversity.
To be a perennial adjunct professor is to hear the constant tone of higher education’s death knell. The story is well known—the long hours, the heavy workload, the insufficient pay—as academia relies on adjunct professors, non-tenured faculty members, who are often paid pennies on the dollar to do the same work required of their tenured colleagues.
It was a modest house by this town’s standards, a center-entrance colonial, three bedrooms and a two-car garage on a quarter-acre lot. The inside hadn’t welcomed a renovator in many, many years, and the outside didn’t wear its age particularly well. Its owner: Peter Brand, Harvard University’s legendary fencing coach.
Its assessed value: $549,300.
So when the house sold to a wealthy Maryland businessman for close to a million dollars in May 2016, the town’s top assessor was so dumbfounded that he wrote the following in his notes: “Makes no sense.”
For Education Week, Madeline Will examines how a lack of paid parental leave forces many teachers to return to the classroom before they’re ready.
“I don’t want to not teach anymore, but I also want to be a mother and have my family as well. ... When do teachers get to be humans?” Many teachers don't receive paid parental leave, forcing them to return to class before they're ready. #tellEWAhttps://t.co/9LMzbQTpqk
As the scandal grows concerning the lucrative children’s book deal by Baltimore’s mayor, Liz Bowie and Talia Richman of The Baltimore Sunask: “Where did all the books go?”
My pick for this week's #tellEWA: The @baltimoresun is delivering master class in investigative reporting. @lizbowie & @TaliRichman even took time to check literary merits of mayor's picture book at heart of widening scandal. Local. Journalism. Matters. https://t.co/hnE89a6hZ8
Adam NorthamMississippi Center for Investigative Reporting
More than six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional, one Mississippi school district has largely segregated classrooms — some all-black, some majority white.
That continuing segregation is made possible by an informal “parental request” policy that allows parents to ask for specific teachers for their elementary-aged children at the 2,800-student Brookhaven School District, a 65 percent black district in southwest Mississippi.
Food pantries are appearing more frequently in a surprising type of location: colleges and universities. More than 700 educational institutions belong to a national nonprofit aiming to alleviate food insecurity among college students. From PBS station WTTW in Chicago, Brandis Friedman reports on how City Colleges and the Greater Chicago Food Depository are providing nutrition along with knowledge.
When Antroine Anderson started kindergarten in this close-knit rural town last August, he knew just three words by sight. He mistook H for G, confused L and I and identified M as F.5
Accustomed to being called AJ by his family, Antroine didn’t recognize his name in print. His mother, Janice Barton, felt ashamed when she learned some of his peers were already writing their names — until she learned many others weren’t prepared for kindergarten either.
Free speech is being tested on college campuses by rising numbers of hate crimes and deepening racial tensions, according to a report released today by PEN America, a human-rights association of writers and editors. But the Trump administration’s warnings of a “crisis” overstate the problem, it says, and risk further polarizing colleges.
Teachers spend their days taking care of other people’s children. But what happens when they have babies of their own?
Unlike other developed nations, the United States does not mandate paid parental leave. And the K-12 education sector is no exception, despite being dominated by women in their childbearing years. Just a handful of states, including Washington state and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia, provide paid parental leave for teachers. And some individual school districts offer it, too.
The Norfolk School Board met last week to evaluate the superintendent without giving notice to the public, a violation of the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Wednesday’s meeting marks at least the fourth time in six months that the board has met without providing sufficient notice of meetings. Two of those times, they provided no notice at all.
A Connecticut school district’s decision to hire security guards while laying off mental health professionals has sparked a debate about school safety, reports Brian Zahn for the New Haven Register.
Meanwhile, an Indiana elementary school received national attention after teachers there were shot with plastic pellets as part of an active-shooter drill, reports Arika Herron for the Indianapolis Star.
And, ICYMI, here's the incident that prompted the proposed amendment. Teachers at an Indiana elementary said they were left with welts, bruises and abrasions after the training. #TellEWAhttps://t.co/CKHtjmFSId via @indystar
Serious violence is both an everyday occurrence and an open secret at Glen Mills, and has been for decades, an Inquirer investigation has found. Internal documents, court records, incident reports, and more than 40 interviews with students, staff, and others show top leaders turn a blind eye to the beatings and insulate themselves from reports while failing to properly vet or train the school’s counselors.
Implicit in the argument made by Students for Fair Admissions is that ending racial considerations in admissions would ultimately benefit the kids at Burbank High. And yet, in the coverage of the Harvard lawsuit, and indeed in almost any story on affirmative action, you rarely hear from this group — the ones without the Tiger Moms and the private SAT tutors — or from the high school counselors like Spilman and Bell who worry less about whether their students will appear “too Asian” and more about whether they even know how to apply to college.
As Tennessee considers a private school voucher program, Chalkbeat’s Laura Faith Kebede explores how a history of racism and distrust could affect families’ willingness to participate.
An active-shooter training exercise at an Indiana elementary school in January left teachers with welts, bruises and abrasions after they were shot with plastic pellets by the local sheriff’s office conducting the session.
The incident, acknowledged in testimony this week before state lawmakers, was confirmed by two elementary school teachers in Monticello, who described an exercise in which teachers were asked by local law enforcement to kneel down against a classroom wall before being sprayed across their backs with plastic pellets without warning.
Families of at least six children and staff members who died in Texas’ deadliest K-12 school shooting, and two injured survivors, still are searching for answers 10 months after a teenage gunman blasted his way through the Galveston County school. Each time they have requested records — including medical examiner and autopsy reports — they have been denied.
What happened when a charter school in Tennessee replaced in-school suspensions with something called a reflection room? Chalkbeat’s Caroline Bauman examines one effort to rethink discipline.
For The Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Vasquez explains how a major chain of for-profit colleges “came crashing down” this month.
This is the worst for-profit college closure that I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. They literally took money that belonged to students. #tellEWAhttps://t.co/e0ldVXTVTs
John Eligon and Audra D. S. BurchThe New York Times
They studied into the wee hours and agonized line by line over their personal essays. They took standardized tests three, four, five times to increase their scores. And last fall, after years of preparation and anxiety, the students at Ewing Marion Kauffman School, a predominantly black school in Kansas City, submitted their college applications, hoping all their hard work would pay off.
What many are calling the worst admissions scandal in higher education emerged Tuesday, with federal authorities announcing 50 indictments in a scheme that allegedly involved faux athletes, coaches who could be bribed, cheating on the SAT and ACT, million-dollar bribes and “guarantees” that certain applicants would be admitted to highly competitive colleges.
For years, Fairfax County Public Schools reported to the federal government that not a single student was physically restrained or trapped in an isolating space.
But documents obtained by WAMU reveal hundreds of cases where children, some as young as 6 years old, were restrained or put in seclusion multiple times. In some cases, a single child was confined to a room almost 100 times in a school year.
In what some are calling “The Trump Effect,” an increasing number of students are considering H.B.C.U.s and single-sex colleges, reports Alina Tugend of The New York Times.
As New York City seeks to diversify its prestigious high schools, some see an opportunity to challenge affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court, writes Mark Keierleber for The 74.
About 14 million students attend schools across the U.S. where they walk the halls alongside police officers but don’t have access to counselors, nurses, psychologists or social workers, according to an ACLU report released Monday.
President Trump’s announcement of an executive order that threatens to cut off federal research money from colleges that do not support free speech has drawn criticism from college leaders and legal scholars on two fronts. First, they say, it might not be legal. Second, they argue, it’s a terrible idea.
When the small Oakland private school received the donation of four Chinese paintings, valued at $2.8 million, administrators were gobsmacked.
After relying on bake sales to stay fiscally afloat for the past two decades, the Pacific Boychoir Academy and its elite after-school music program were sitting on a relative fortune.
Basis Charter Schools Tells Lenders It Could Tap Parents’ Donations to Pay Mounting Debt
Going into debt to expand out of state could put the brakes on Basis Charter Schools Inc. growing in Arizona as the high-performing academic chain lost $11.6 million in fiscal 2018.
Deserted in the Desert
Thousands of records examined by the Las Vegas Review-Journal show a yearslong history of abuse and neglect allegations at Northwest Academy, a private boarding school for at-risk youth.
May 3 – May 16
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
In the months before the shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch, some parents raised concerns about bullying and inadequate security, reports Jenny Brundin for Colorado Public Radio.
The two school shootings in as many weeks have prompted officials to discuss the risk of students confronting active shooters, writes Tawnell Hobbs for The Wall Street Journal.
A Mock Funeral Aims to Help Students Bury Their Pain
By the time the last student walked past the open casket, hundreds of notes were piled inside, bits of pain the mourners hoped to bury.
The casket was real, but the funeral was symbolic, staged at a west-side Atlanta high school surrounded by poverty. It began with gospel music blasting through the gym. A pastor preached redemption and self-worth. Grieving mothers remembered their teenage sons, whose real funerals were just last year.
My Education Secretary Will Be a Former Public School Teacher, Elizabeth Warren Pledges
A Democratic candidate for president has made a promise: My pick to replace Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will have experience in public schools.
Mississippi Education: Lawmakers Funnel Millions to Connected Companies
Top lawmakers carve out millions of dollars for handpicked education vendors and pet projects each year, bypassing state bid laws and steering money to companies that know the right people or hire the right lobbyists.
A Clarion Ledger analysis of education appropriations for the last four years uncovered millions of dollars in earmarks for select vendors — most of them represented by three lobbying firms. In at least four cases, key lawmakers received campaign contributions from vendors who received those earmarks.
Free Press Reporter David Jesse Named Top Education Reporter in U.S.
Detroit Free Press higher education reporter David Jesse was honored as the top education reporter in the country for 2018 by the Education Writers Association.
Jesse was recognized for his coverage of the Larry Nassar scandal at Michigan State University and work he did with Free Press investigative reporter Matthew Dolan on the University of Michigan’s endowment.
EWA — made up of the nation’s education journalists — presented Jesse with the award at its annual conference earlier this week.
DeVos Might Not Serve as Ed. Secretary If Trump Re-elected
Betsy DeVos hinted Monday that should President Donald Trump get re-elected in 2020 that she might not serve as education secretary during his second term.
“I’m not sure my husband would be OK with that,” said DeVos of her husband, Dick DeVos, a former Michigan gubernatorial candidate, after hesitating before delivering her response.
April 26 – May 2
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
Leaky roofs. Corroded pipes. Faulty fire alarm systems. Detroit’s school buildings are broken, but the district lacks the resources to fix them, reports Jennifer Chambers for The Detroit News.
Continuing the wave of teacher activism that began last year, Oregon educators are poised to walk out of their classrooms next week, writes Natalie Pate for the Statesman Journal in Salem.
‘Why Would We Even Try?’ Parents Of Disabled Students Almost Never Win In Fights Against Maryland Districts
It’s rare for the parents of students with disabilities to prevail in legal battles against Maryland school districts. In the past five years, they’ve lost more than 85 percent of the time, state education department documents show, even after investing tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours in pursuit of a better education for their children.
Advocates, families and attorneys say the trend is alarming and discourages people from fighting for the rights kids are guaranteed under federal law.
Anger Over Greek Life Reaches Boiling Point at Swarthmore, Where Dozens Are Occupying a Frat House
Nearly 80 students congregated on Monday in the living room of Swarthmore College’s Phi Psi fraternity house. Plastered on one wall was a banner featuring the logo of Natural Light beer.
But the students weren’t there to party. For the past three days, they had been occupying the house as part of an extensive protest against the college’s two fraternities.
After The Admissions Scandal, Students In The Shadows Of USC Wonder: Will They Get In?
Anthony Ramirez worried about how the admissions officers at his dream school, the University of Southern California, would judge him. His home lies a short drive from the school, but in his neighborhood, there are far more high school dropouts than college graduates.
Faith, Friendship and Tragedy at Santa Fe High School
Sabika Sheikh, a Muslim exchange student from Pakistan with dreams of changing the world, struck up an unlikely friendship with an evangelical Christian girl. The two became inseparable—until the day a fellow student opened fire.
April 19 – April 25
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
In a three-part series for KNKX, Ashley Gross examines how Washington state’s graduation rates exclude many students who are most at risk of dropping out.
As Colorado considers a bill to encourage more students to take advanced courses, Colorado Public Radio’s Jenny Brundin finds that many students and schools aren’t waiting for official action.
A Search For Answers, A Search For Blame
Max Eden didn’t even want to read about Parkland. He saw the news on Valentine’s Day, after a dinner date with his girlfriend at a little French place in Washington, D.C., taking an Uber home. There was the gut-punch—“oh shit, another school shooting”—then the queasy afterthought that none of this hits as hard as it used to. He knew what would follow. For a few angry weeks, Democrats would demand gun control and Republicans would call for arming teachers. He decided he’d sit it out this time, ignore the news as much as possible.
Elizabeth Warren Introduces Plan to Erase Most Student Loan Debt and to Make Public College Free
Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on Monday unveiled a sweeping proposal to erase student loan debt for millions of Americans and make public college free for millions more, a plan that could distinguish her from the rest of the Democratic field.
Silicon Valley Came to Kansas Schools. That Started a Rebellion.
The seed of rebellion was planted in classrooms. It grew in kitchens and living rooms, in conversations between students and their parents.
It culminated when Collin Winter, 14, an eighth grader in McPherson, Kan., joined a classroom walkout in January. In the nearby town of Wellington, high schoolers staged a sit-in. Their parents organized in living rooms, at churches and in the back of machine repair shops. They showed up en masse to school board meetings. In neighborhoods with no political yard signs, homemade signs with dark red slash marks suddenly popped up.
April 12 – April 18
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
A new report shows wealthy school districts are increasingly splitting from poorer, more racially diverse ones, reports Emmanuel Felton for The Hechinger Report.
The lack of diversity on one North Texas school district’s board is the subject of a voting rights lawsuit filed this week, reports Eva-Marie Ayala for The Dallas Morning News.
Parkland Students Bask in Pulitzer Mention: ‘They Took Us Seriously’
As 3 p.m. approached on Monday, the editors of The Eagle Eye student newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., huddled around their adviser’s desk for the announcement of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes.
They watched not as journalism groupies, but as award contenders.
Study: There’s No Evidence That Hardening Schools to Make Kids Safer From Gun Violence Actually Works
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on measures to harden public schools in an attempt to make students safer from gun violence, but a new report says there is no evidence those measures have worked. Instead, it says, they have created “a false sense of security.”
April 5 – April 11
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
A series of stories this week from education reporters describe the challenges some places face in attracting and keeping teachers. For USA Today, Erin Richards explains how soaring housing prices are fueling a chronic teacher shortage in Hawaii.
In Colorado, officials are trying a novel strategy to attract teachers to rural communities. Colorado Public Radio’s Jenny Brundin reports on the “rural immersion” program.
Why Is Child Care So Expensive? Costs Leave Washington-Area Millennials Hesitant to Have Kids
When it came time for Kristina and Jason Salguero to send their son Austin to daycare, they were shocked to learn that it could cost as much as it would to send him to college.
They enrolled Austin, but decided to put off their plans to have a second child. “It’s like they don’t want us to have children,” Kristina says.
This led her to write to WAMU’s What’s With Washington. “Why is daycare so expensive in the D.C. area, particularly in Montgomery County?” she asked.
Study: Per-Student Public Spending Recovers Halfway Since Recession
A decade after the 2008 recession, fewer than one in five states has fully recovered when it comes to per-student appropriations for higher education.
Is the U.S. a Democracy? A Social Studies Battle Turns on the Nation’s Values
Bruising political fights are usual business in Becky Debowski’s eighth-grade social studies classroom. From a model Constitutional Convention to a bare-knuckle debate in Congress over slavery, she regularly has students assume roles of partisans throughout American history, like Abraham Lincoln and John C. Calhoun.
After the exercises, the class comes back together to debate whether the nation lived up to what the state of Michigan calls “core democratic values,” such as equality, liberty and diversity.
The Human Cost of Higher Education’s Adjunct Shift
To be a perennial adjunct professor is to hear the constant tone of higher education’s death knell. The story is well known—the long hours, the heavy workload, the insufficient pay—as academia relies on adjunct professors, non-tenured faculty members, who are often paid pennies on the dollar to do the same work required of their tenured colleagues.
He Bought the Fencing Coach’s House. Then His Son Got Into Harvard
It was a modest house by this town’s standards, a center-entrance colonial, three bedrooms and a two-car garage on a quarter-acre lot. The inside hadn’t welcomed a renovator in many, many years, and the outside didn’t wear its age particularly well. Its owner: Peter Brand, Harvard University’s legendary fencing coach.
Its assessed value: $549,300.
So when the house sold to a wealthy Maryland businessman for close to a million dollars in May 2016, the town’s top assessor was so dumbfounded that he wrote the following in his notes: “Makes no sense.”
Mar. 29 – April 4
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For Education Week, Madeline Will examines how a lack of paid parental leave forces many teachers to return to the classroom before they’re ready.
As the scandal grows concerning the lucrative children’s book deal by Baltimore’s mayor, Liz Bowie and Talia Richman of The Baltimore Sun ask: “Where did all the books go?”
63 Years After Brown, Segregated Classrooms Persist In One Mississippi School District
More than six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional, one Mississippi school district has largely segregated classrooms — some all-black, some majority white.
That continuing segregation is made possible by an informal “parental request” policy that allows parents to ask for specific teachers for their elementary-aged children at the 2,800-student Brookhaven School District, a 65 percent black district in southwest Mississippi.
Pop-up Pantries Aim To Reduce Food Insecurity For College Students
Food pantries are appearing more frequently in a surprising type of location: colleges and universities. More than 700 educational institutions belong to a national nonprofit aiming to alleviate food insecurity among college students. From PBS station WTTW in Chicago, Brandis Friedman reports on how City Colleges and the Greater Chicago Food Depository are providing nutrition along with knowledge.
Fighting for Mississippi’s Struggling 5-Year-Olds, One Student at a Time
When Antroine Anderson started kindergarten in this close-knit rural town last August, he knew just three words by sight. He mistook H for G, confused L and I and identified M as F.5
Accustomed to being called AJ by his family, Antroine didn’t recognize his name in print. His mother, Janice Barton, felt ashamed when she learned some of his peers were already writing their names — until she learned many others weren’t prepared for kindergarten either.
If There Is a Free-Speech ‘Crisis’ on Campus, PEN America Says, Lawmakers Are Making It Worse
Free speech is being tested on college campuses by rising numbers of hate crimes and deepening racial tensions, according to a report released today by PEN America, a human-rights association of writers and editors. But the Trump administration’s warnings of a “crisis” overstate the problem, it says, and risk further polarizing colleges.
With No Paid Parental Leave, Many Teachers Return to Class Before They’re Ready
Teachers spend their days taking care of other people’s children. But what happens when they have babies of their own?
Unlike other developed nations, the United States does not mandate paid parental leave. And the K-12 education sector is no exception, despite being dominated by women in their childbearing years. Just a handful of states, including Washington state and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia, provide paid parental leave for teachers. And some individual school districts offer it, too.
Norfolk School Board Holds 4th Illegal Meeting in 6 Months
The Norfolk School Board met last week to evaluate the superintendent without giving notice to the public, a violation of the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Wednesday’s meeting marks at least the fourth time in six months that the board has met without providing sufficient notice of meetings. Two of those times, they provided no notice at all.
Mar. 22 – Mar. 28
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
A Connecticut school district’s decision to hire security guards while laying off mental health professionals has sparked a debate about school safety, reports Brian Zahn for the New Haven Register.
Meanwhile, an Indiana elementary school received national attention after teachers there were shot with plastic pellets as part of an active-shooter drill, reports Arika Herron for the Indianapolis Star.
At Glen Mills Schools, Boys Are Beaten, Then Silenced
Serious violence is both an everyday occurrence and an open secret at Glen Mills, and has been for decades, an Inquirer investigation has found. Internal documents, court records, incident reports, and more than 40 interviews with students, staff, and others show top leaders turn a blind eye to the beatings and insulate themselves from reports while failing to properly vet or train the school’s counselors.
Repeated Scandals Stymie USC’s Efforts to Improve its Image
After a series of embarrassing scandals and divisive controversies at the University of Southern California over the past two years, students, alumni and faculty hoped 2019 would be different.
It’s not.
Does Affirmative Action Help or Hurt Asians Who Don’t Fit the Model-Minority Stereotype?
Implicit in the argument made by Students for Fair Admissions is that ending racial considerations in admissions would ultimately benefit the kids at Burbank High. And yet, in the coverage of the Harvard lawsuit, and indeed in almost any story on affirmative action, you rarely hear from this group — the ones without the Tiger Moms and the private SAT tutors — or from the high school counselors like Spilman and Bell who worry less about whether their students will appear “too Asian” and more about whether they even know how to apply to college.
Mar. 15 – Mar. 21
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For Oregon Public Broadcasting, Rob Manning examines schools’ use of seclusion and restraint for students with disabilities.
As Tennessee considers a private school voucher program, Chalkbeat’s Laura Faith Kebede explores how a history of racism and distrust could affect families’ willingness to participate.
Active Shooter Training For Schools: Teachers Shot With Plastic Pellets
An active-shooter training exercise at an Indiana elementary school in January left teachers with welts, bruises and abrasions after they were shot with plastic pellets by the local sheriff’s office conducting the session.
The incident, acknowledged in testimony this week before state lawmakers, was confirmed by two elementary school teachers in Monticello, who described an exercise in which teachers were asked by local law enforcement to kneel down against a classroom wall before being sprayed across their backs with plastic pellets without warning.
Ten Months After Santa Fe High Shooting, Families Still Seek Answers
Families of at least six children and staff members who died in Texas’ deadliest K-12 school shooting, and two injured survivors, still are searching for answers 10 months after a teenage gunman blasted his way through the Galveston County school. Each time they have requested records — including medical examiner and autopsy reports — they have been denied.
Mar. 8 – Mar. 14
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
What happened when a charter school in Tennessee replaced in-school suspensions with something called a reflection room? Chalkbeat’s Caroline Bauman examines one effort to rethink discipline.
For The Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Vasquez explains how a major chain of for-profit colleges “came crashing down” this month.
‘What Does It Take?’: Admissions Scandal Is a Harsh Lesson in Racial Disparities
They studied into the wee hours and agonized line by line over their personal essays. They took standardized tests three, four, five times to increase their scores. And last fall, after years of preparation and anxiety, the students at Ewing Marion Kauffman School, a predominantly black school in Kansas City, submitted their college applications, hoping all their hard work would pay off.
Dozens Indicted In Alleged Massive Case Of Admissions Fraud
What many are calling the worst admissions scandal in higher education emerged Tuesday, with federal authorities announcing 50 indictments in a scheme that allegedly involved faux athletes, coaches who could be bribed, cheating on the SAT and ACT, million-dollar bribes and “guarantees” that certain applicants would be admitted to highly competitive colleges.
Children Are Routinely Isolated In Some Fairfax County Schools. The District Didn’t Report It.
For years, Fairfax County Public Schools reported to the federal government that not a single student was physically restrained or trapped in an isolating space.
But documents obtained by WAMU reveal hundreds of cases where children, some as young as 6 years old, were restrained or put in seclusion multiple times. In some cases, a single child was confined to a room almost 100 times in a school year.
Mar. 1 – Mar. 7
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
In what some are calling “The Trump Effect,” an increasing number of students are considering H.B.C.U.s and single-sex colleges, reports Alina Tugend of The New York Times.
As New York City seeks to diversify its prestigious high schools, some see an opportunity to challenge affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court, writes Mark Keierleber for The 74.
Schools Getting More Police but at the Expense of Counselors, Nurses
About 14 million students attend schools across the U.S. where they walk the halls alongside police officers but don’t have access to counselors, nurses, psychologists or social workers, according to an ACLU report released Monday.
Legal Scholars Don’t Know the Details of Trump’s Order on Campus Speech. But They Think It’s a Mistake
President Trump’s announcement of an executive order that threatens to cut off federal research money from colleges that do not support free speech has drawn criticism from college leaders and legal scholars on two fronts. First, they say, it might not be legal. Second, they argue, it’s a terrible idea.
An Oakland School Upped Spending After A $2.8m Donation Of Chinese Paintings. Then Came The Appraisal
When the small Oakland private school received the donation of four Chinese paintings, valued at $2.8 million, administrators were gobsmacked.
After relying on bake sales to stay fiscally afloat for the past two decades, the Pacific Boychoir Academy and its elite after-school music program were sitting on a relative fortune.