As the LeBron James-affiliated I Promise School enters its second year, leaders look to build on their success while feeling pressure to meet high expectations, reports Jennifer Pignolet of the Akron Beacon Journal/Ohio.com.
Tennessee WatsonAPM Reports/Wyoming Public RadioLori Crouch
Under federal law, children of any age can work on farms operated
by their parents, and kids as young as 10 can be hired to work on
farms not operated by their relatives during short-term harvests.
At age 12, kids can begin working nonhazardous farm jobs outside
school hours with parental permission. And at 16, they can do any
job on a farm regardless of the risks. That’s at least two years
younger than other industries.
Kentucky Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis has in recent
weeks drawn attention to a statewide teacher shortage,
warning that thousands of instructional vacancies could be
putting student learning at risk.
But reports of an immediate crisis are overblown, a Courier
Journal review has found.
The Trump administration published
a final rule Monday making it harder for immigrants who have
received certain public benefits such as food stamps, most forms
of Medicaid and housing assistance to obtain permanent resident
status.
A raft of research has shown that children see benefits even many
years later from attending early childhood programs like
the Perry preschool initiative and federally
funded Head Start.
That’s why a new study comes a surprise. When
researchers used similar methods as Deming to look at students
born later, mostly between 1986 and 1996, they found that Head
Start provided no clear long-term benefits. If anything, the
program led to somewhat worse outcomes.
For NJ Advance Media, Kelly Heyboer and Adam Clark reveal how a web of red tape allows some teachers to work for years after they have been accused of serious misconduct.
A school in Georgia is under fire for a policy prohibiting hairstyles popular among black students, reports Marlon A. Walker for The Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Alec Resnick and Shaunalynn Duffy stood in Somerville City Hall
at about 6:30 on March 18, a night they hoped would launch the
next chapter of their lives. The two had spent nearly seven years
designing a new kind of high school meant to address the needs of
students who didn’t thrive in a traditional setting. They’d
developed a projects-driven curriculum that would give students
nearly unprecedented control over what they would learn, in a
small, supportive environment.
Blythe BernhardSt. Louis Post-DispatchAllison Kowalski
The 2015 Ferguson Commission report called on the state to
overhaul the school accreditation system to address racial and
income inequity. It said the transfer system “fail(s) to fix the
schools that have lost accreditation or to address the core
issues that led to losing accreditation” because it sends
“motivated students and money away.”
Emma PettitThe Chronicle of Higher EducationAllison Kowalski
In the wake of yet another mass shooting, committed by yet
another radicalized young white man, scholars are repeating a
call to action that has been issued during the Trump presidency:
White supremacists are distorting history. It’s the job of
experts, who know better, to push back.
Jose Lorenzo earned his bachelor’s degree from Roosevelt
University this spring after moving here from Mexico four years
ago without speaking much English. Last week, he made his way
back to where his education in the United States began: Daley
College on Chicago’s far Southwest Side.
He took English classes there when he first moved to Chicago. It
was in those English classes where he polished the basics and, in
advanced classes, learned how to write five paragraph essays and
read books like Charlotte’s Web.
Michigan will have two separate accountability systems for its
K-12 schools, which is the result of lame-duck legislation
conflicting with federal education law.
Michigan already had an accountability system in
place under the Every Student Succeeds Act when
state lawmakers in December passed a new state A-F
accountability system in the early morning hours of a lame-duck
session.
Amid a national discussion on desegregation, Jefferson County Public Schools may have found a model that balances diversity with equitable school choice, reports Olivia Krauth for Insider Louisville.
NEW: Is a proposed #JCPS assignment plan the key to equity or a step backwards?
With changes to Title IX looming at the federal level, students at the University of Nebraska are pushing for reforms locally, reports Chris Dunker for the Lincoln Journal Star.
“I could not understand why my concerns weren’t being taken seriously, and as a result, I felt crazy for bearing my concerns."
'Dear UNL' pushing for local reforms of Title IX office, investigations amid national uncertainty. #tellEWAhttps://t.co/pEIzmnKrru
For years, Kentucky aggressively prosecuted minors for breaking
curfew or underage drinking. The state is now taking a different
approach that may help keep kids out of the criminal justice
system.
In 1998, the average Latino elementary school student attended a
school where 40 percent of her classmates were white. But by
2015, the average young Latino student was attending a school
with a student body of only 30 percent white students,
demonstrating an increased level of ethnic segregation, according
to a new analysis of student data. One factor is the growing
share of Latino students among the elementary-school population,
the study notes.
More than 500,000 children would lose automatic eligibility for
free school meals under a rule proposed last week by the
Agriculture Department intended to tighten access to food stamps.
The impact on school meals, revealed by Representative Robert C.
Scott, Democrat of Virginia and the chairman of the House
Committee on Education and Labor, was not disclosed when the
proposed food stamp rule was published last week. Agriculture
officials said the new rule would close a loophole that they said
allowed people with high incomes and accumulated assets to
receive food stamps.
American schools are undergoing a dramatic shift in their
approaches to school discipline, as states and districts have
worked over the past few years to reduce student suspensions
under federal guidance issued by the Obama administration.
Jodi S. Cohen and Melissa SanchezProPublicaAllison Kowalski
Parents are giving up legal guardianship of their children during
their junior or senior year in high school to someone else — a
friend, aunt, cousin or grandparent. The guardianship status then
allows the students to declare themselves financially independent
of their families so they can qualify for federal, state and
university aid, a ProPublica Illinois investigation found.
Can increasing teachers’ pay solve the problem of teacher shortages? For The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Marlon A. Walker explains why there’s reason to be skeptical.
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Eric Kelderman and Dan Bauman detail how a series of missteps have led one university to the brink of financial ruin.
Braddye Smith, Chandra Harper-Gallashaw, and William KingPittsburgh Journalism Project/Atlanta Journal ConstitutionLori Crouch
Over the past decade, the Atlanta Public Schools cheating
scandal devastated Pittsburgh. The community’s schools were at
the epicenter, so much so that one will be the focus of a
forthcoming Hollywood movie. For a proud South Atlanta community
once home to one of the city’s best schools for black children,
the memory of teachers marched out of school by police still
stings.
Long a poster child for America’s prison problems, California’s prison system has developed a promising new educational approach that may serve as a blueprint for other states, reports Wayne D’Orio for The Hechinger Report.
Recidivism rates for prisoners who take any college courses are 43 percent lower than those who are released without taking classes. @waynedorio's latest on how California’s overhaul of prison education offers a blueprint for other states. #tellEWAhttps://t.co/gGvRiSxRCcpic.twitter.com/nLzdBTZjqJ
— The Hechinger Report (@hechingerreport) July 17, 2019
In an investigation for EdSurge, Emily Tate examines a disturbing side of the thriving online English-tutoring market.
NEW: For the past six months, I've been investigating a troubling yet little-known dark side to the thriving online English-teaching industry. #tellEWAhttps://t.co/GgzwZ7Unxo
Devin Leonard and Shahien NasiripourBloomberg BusinessweekEmily Richmond
For all the years since Jimmy Carter picked Shirley Hufstedler in
1979 to be the first holder of the title, it’s been a tradition
for the U.S. education secretary to address the annual gathering
of the hundreds of journalists covering their department. Two
years ago, Betsy DeVos, who’d recently been confirmed as
President Donald Trump’s education secretary, turned down an
invitation from the Education Writers Association. The next year
she did so again, raising the possibility that she might be the
first person with the job to snub the organization altogether in
almost 40 years.
Danielle Douglas-GabrielThe Washington PostAllison Kowalski
The American Federation of Teachers, one of the country’s biggest
teachers unions, sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday
alleging gross mismanagement of a loan forgiveness program for
public servants.
For The Washington Post, Jessica Contrera chronicles a hate crime at a Maryland high school, and the emotional reckoning that followed.
Can you commit racist acts without being racist? @mjcontrera's piece about Maryland high schoolers' hate crime is so good that I forced myself to slow down reading so that I didn't miss a word. She's my pick for this week's #tellEWA. https://t.co/RUUuYQsqoq
Latino children make up nearly half of Boston’s public school students, yet the collective voice of their parents does not loom large in the system, reports Bianca Vázquez Toness for WGBH.
Read about how Latino parents in Boston are dramatically underrepresented in school decisions. #tellEWAhttps://t.co/9HIztvFyVX
— BiancaVázquezToness (@biancavtoness) July 10, 2019
Brown tap water. Student brawls. Chronically absent teachers.
Test scores that rank among the worst in the country.
The public school district here is full of deplorable conditions,
according to a recent scathing report by the Johns Hopkins
Institute for Education Policy. Now the capital city, proud of
its downtown renaissance, restaurants and arts scene, faces a
painful reckoning as it is debating what to do with a failing
school system that serves 24,000 children, who are mostly poor
and Hispanic.
Jessica ContreraThe Washington PostAllison Kowalski
The principal saw a swastika first. It was inky black, spray
painted on a trash can just beside the entrance to the high
school. David Burton switched off the engine of his SUV, unaware,
even then, of the magnitude of what he was about to see.
Lauren CameraU.S. News and World ReportAllison Kowalski
MORE THAN 300,000 Hispanic students have been displaced from K-12
schools in communities where local police have forged
partnerships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to
better enforce immigration laws, according to a
new study from researchers at Stanford University.
As Education Department opens investigations into whether
universities complied with law requiring federal reporting of
foreign gifts and contracts, colleges call for more clarity on
what the law requires.
For NOLA.com and The Times Picayune, Wilborn Nobles III explores the complex state of school discipline reform in New Orleans where expulsions are down but suspensions are up.
In project that took him from Oklahoma to England — and supported in part by an EWA Reporting Fellowship – Ben Felder explores the promise of higher education programs in prisons in a series for The Oklahoman.
Higher education as a tool to reduce recidivism. In this three-part series @TheOklahoman looked at two programs in Oklahoma and traveled to England, where an aggressive vocational training program has shown signs of success #tellewahttps://t.co/4ZqsiYRDVCpic.twitter.com/XOLPvFyfcT
The Indianapolis archbishop has ordered Catholic high schools in
the city to dismiss teachers who are married to someone of the
same sex, or sever ties with the archdiocese.
Steven Johnson The Chronicle of Higher EducationAllison Kowalski
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ilhan Omar on Monday proposed
legislation to cancel all federal and private student-loan debt,
carried by about 45 million Americans.
Sanders’s proposal also calls for free tuition and fees at two-
and four-year public colleges, and $1.3 billion a year to support
students at historically black colleges and universities.
Sanders, a Vermont Independent, proposed paying for the plan
through taxes on Wall Street transactions in stocks, bonds, and
derivatives.
The nation’s seventh-largest school district is embarking on a massive effort to address students’ challenges outside the classroom, reports Jacob Carpenter for the Houston Chronicle.
For The Christian Science Monitor, Stacy Teicher Khadaroo examines a historic vote at Georgetown University and what it reveals about the national dialogue over a call for reparations for slavery.
A GU272 descendant student on hearing of the yes vote: “I cried a little bit. I thanked the ancestors. Because this is really for them, you know?”
When the Walton Family Foundation announced in 2013 that it was
donating $20 million to Teach For America to recruit and train
nearly 4,000 teachers for low-income schools, its press
release did not reveal the unusual terms for the grant.
The influx of poor immigrant families brought a flood of
resources as the school’s official poverty rate rose above 90
percent: an after-school program, three interpreters and a steady
infusion of federal funding.
But in recent years, as the Trump administration’s immigration
crackdown began to reverberate through the nation’s public
schools, the students who had been such a fiscal asset have
turned into a budgetary liability.
A plan to close a predominantly black high school in Michigan is unfolding as the first crisis of Gretchen Whitmer’s governorship, writes Jennifer Chambers for The Detroit News.
The classroom is becoming the battleground in the war
against drug addiction where the next generation will be saved or
lost in Ohio, which in 2017 had the second highest
rate of opioid overdose deaths in the country.
If American taxpayers were to fork out a couple billion more on
top of the $650 billion they annually spend on public schools,
would academic outcomes improve?
Donations — many of them anything but charitable — are at the
heart of the admissions scandal. Using a sham foundation, parents
paid off coaches, in part with donations to their programs. Then
the donors’ sons and daughters ended up on lists of recruited
athletes, easing their admission to competitive colleges.
Everything was fake. The foundation was a tool for money
laundering.
Lauren CameraUS News & World ReportDLoewenberg@ewa.org
The anticipated undercount of people and poverty, driven by the
reluctance of immigrant communities and Hispanic households to
complete the census if the citizenship question is included, is
expected to have a devastating impact on federal K-12 funding for
school districts that serve the most vulnerable students.
Ahead of the high court’s decision, educators across the country
are bracing themselves for billions of dollars in critical
resources that could be lost and they’re scrambling to develop
ways to minimize the undercount.
Ma’kayla Hill rocks on her pink and white sneakers as she
presents her poster. On one side, her stick-figure cartoons
depict the way people often see Baltimore: A man shoots a boy who
owes him money; the victim’s sister runs to get their mother; her
speech bubble reads, “OMG My Son.” “But my perspective of
Baltimore City is everyone having fun … at our friend’s house or
at a playground,” the eighth-grader says, pointing to the other
side, with drawings of kids on swings. “Baltimore can be a
wonderful place once we all come together.”
The presidential-election cycle has barely begun but one thing is
already clear: The Democratic candidates want to talk about
student debt. No surprise there; the trillion-dollar student-loan
bubble has captured the national imagination in ways few
higher-education issues have, and candidates are essentially
obligated to have a plan to address it.
Rutgers University’s daily student paper lost its financial
backing last month, after a conservative group that called the
paper “fake news” led a two-year campaign to defund it. Now a
major campus civil liberties organization is calling the
defunding unconstitutional.
Washington has remained one of just a dozen states that require
students to pass high-stakes exams to earn a high-school
diploma. That’s about to change: Starting with the class of 2020,
high schoolers will no longer have to clear the standardized
tests to graduate on time.
Craig Wacker and Lynn OlsonFutureEdAllison Kowalski
This report explores the critical importance of “teacher
mindsets,” or teachers’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices, in
fortifying students’ investment in learning. We profile several
schools in the forefront of that work, schools that have begun to
use the new findings on teacher mindsets to shift adult belief
and behaviors in ways that strengthen students’ view of
themselves as learners and their motivation to learn.
Giacomo Bologna and Bracey HarrisMississippi Clarion LedgerAllison Kowalski
As Mississippi lawmakers struggle to fund public
pre-K programs, they have funneled nearly a million dollars of
state education money to a preschool in Oxford that
charges about $6,000 a year in tuition.
Wealthy parents illegally paying bribes so their kids could get
extra time to take the SAT or ACT exam is a central part of the
college admissions scandal. And while what Caplan and other
accused parents did is illegal, higher education analysts say
students living in affluent, suburban towns like Greenwich are
much more likely to get extra time — legally. In 2011, The
College Board, the nonprofit that runs the SAT, received 80,000
requests for extended time. Five years later, that number doubled
to 160,000.
Danielle Douglas-GabrielThe Washington PostAllison Kowalski
When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reinstated a controversial
accrediting agency in April 2018, she threw a lifeline to
Virginia College, a chain of for-profit schools that some higher
education experts said should have closed.
Black students in charter schools are more likely to have black
teachers than their peers in traditional public schools, which
can lead to academic gains in math, a new study shows.
The study published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a
right-leaning think tank that also authorizes charter schools in
Ohio, examined data from grades 3 to 5 in North Carolina’s
traditional and charter public schools, from 2006-07 through
2012-13.
Aug 9 – Aug 15
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For APM Reports, Chris Julin examines the challenges facing the country’s growing number of homeless students.
As the LeBron James-affiliated I Promise School enters its second year, leaders look to build on their success while feeling pressure to meet high expectations, reports Jennifer Pignolet of the Akron Beacon Journal/Ohio.com.
The Children In The Fields
Under federal law, children of any age can work on farms operated by their parents, and kids as young as 10 can be hired to work on farms not operated by their relatives during short-term harvests. At age 12, kids can begin working nonhazardous farm jobs outside school hours with parental permission. And at 16, they can do any job on a farm regardless of the risks. That’s at least two years younger than other industries.
Kentucky Teacher Shortage: Are ‘Thousands’ of Jobs Actually Vacant?
Kentucky Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis has in recent weeks drawn attention to a statewide teacher shortage, warning that thousands of instructional vacancies could be putting student learning at risk.
But reports of an immediate crisis are overblown, a Courier Journal review has found.
New Public Charge Rule Has Implications for Higher Education and Students
The Trump administration published a final rule Monday making it harder for immigrants who have received certain public benefits such as food stamps, most forms of Medicaid and housing assistance to obtain permanent resident status.
A New Study Questions Whether Head Start Still Produces Long-Run Gains Seen in Past Research
A raft of research has shown that children see benefits even many years later from attending early childhood programs like the Perry preschool initiative and federally funded Head Start.
That’s why a new study comes a surprise. When researchers used similar methods as Deming to look at students born later, mostly between 1986 and 1996, they found that Head Start provided no clear long-term benefits. If anything, the program led to somewhat worse outcomes.
Aug 2 – Aug 8
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For NJ Advance Media, Kelly Heyboer and Adam Clark reveal how a web of red tape allows some teachers to work for years after they have been accused of serious misconduct.
A school in Georgia is under fire for a policy prohibiting hairstyles popular among black students, reports Marlon A. Walker for The Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Anatomy Of A Failure: How An XQ Super School Flopped
Alec Resnick and Shaunalynn Duffy stood in Somerville City Hall at about 6:30 on March 18, a night they hoped would launch the next chapter of their lives. The two had spent nearly seven years designing a new kind of high school meant to address the needs of students who didn’t thrive in a traditional setting. They’d developed a projects-driven curriculum that would give students nearly unprecedented control over what they would learn, in a small, supportive environment.
Students ‘Were the Victims’: End of the Transfer Program Highlights Inequality In St. Louis Area Schools
The 2015 Ferguson Commission report called on the state to overhaul the school accreditation system to address racial and income inequity. It said the transfer system “fail(s) to fix the schools that have lost accreditation or to address the core issues that led to losing accreditation” because it sends “motivated students and money away.”
As White Supremacists Try to Remake History, Scholars Seek to Preserve the Record
In the wake of yet another mass shooting, committed by yet another radicalized young white man, scholars are repeating a call to action that has been issued during the Trump presidency: White supremacists are distorting history. It’s the job of experts, who know better, to push back.
Debate Raging At City Colleges Of Chicago Over ESL Classes
Jose Lorenzo earned his bachelor’s degree from Roosevelt University this spring after moving here from Mexico four years ago without speaking much English. Last week, he made his way back to where his education in the United States began: Daley College on Chicago’s far Southwest Side.
He took English classes there when he first moved to Chicago. It was in those English classes where he polished the basics and, in advanced classes, learned how to write five paragraph essays and read books like Charlotte’s Web.
Michigan To Have Two Separate Accountability Systems For Schools
Michigan will have two separate accountability systems for its K-12 schools, which is the result of lame-duck legislation conflicting with federal education law.
Michigan already had an accountability system in place under the Every Student Succeeds Act when state lawmakers in December passed a new state A-F accountability system in the early morning hours of a lame-duck session.
July 26 – Aug 1
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
Amid a national discussion on desegregation, Jefferson County Public Schools may have found a model that balances diversity with equitable school choice, reports Olivia Krauth for Insider Louisville.
With changes to Title IX looming at the federal level, students at the University of Nebraska are pushing for reforms locally, reports Chris Dunker for the Lincoln Journal Star.
Kentucky’s Turnaround On Prosecuting Minors For ‘Status Offenses’ Like Truancy
For years, Kentucky aggressively prosecuted minors for breaking curfew or underage drinking. The state is now taking a different approach that may help keep kids out of the criminal justice system.
Segregation of Latino Students From White Peers Increased Over a Generation, Study Finds
In 1998, the average Latino elementary school student attended a school where 40 percent of her classmates were white. But by 2015, the average young Latino student was attending a school with a student body of only 30 percent white students, demonstrating an increased level of ethnic segregation, according to a new analysis of student data. One factor is the growing share of Latino students among the elementary-school population, the study notes.
500,000 Children Could Lose Free School Meals Under Trump Administration Proposal
More than 500,000 children would lose automatic eligibility for free school meals under a rule proposed last week by the Agriculture Department intended to tighten access to food stamps. The impact on school meals, revealed by Representative Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia and the chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, was not disclosed when the proposed food stamp rule was published last week. Agriculture officials said the new rule would close a loophole that they said allowed people with high incomes and accumulated assets to receive food stamps.
New Survey: Teachers Report Widespread Student Behavioral Disruptions but Sharply Diverge on Whether Consequences Demonstrate Racial Bias
American schools are undergoing a dramatic shift in their approaches to school discipline, as states and districts have worked over the past few years to reduce student suspensions under federal guidance issued by the Obama administration.
Parents Are Giving Up Custody of Their Kids to Get Need-Based College Financial Aid
Parents are giving up legal guardianship of their children during their junior or senior year in high school to someone else — a friend, aunt, cousin or grandparent. The guardianship status then allows the students to declare themselves financially independent of their families so they can qualify for federal, state and university aid, a ProPublica Illinois investigation found.
July 19 – July 25
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
Can increasing teachers’ pay solve the problem of teacher shortages? For The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Marlon A. Walker explains why there’s reason to be skeptical.
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Eric Kelderman and Dan Bauman detail how a series of missteps have led one university to the brink of financial ruin.
How Pittsburgh Students Have Fared Since The Atlanta Cheating Scandal
Over the past decade, the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal devastated Pittsburgh. The community’s schools were at the epicenter, so much so that one will be the focus of a forthcoming Hollywood movie. For a proud South Atlanta community once home to one of the city’s best schools for black children, the memory of teachers marched out of school by police still stings.
July 12 – July 18
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
Long a poster child for America’s prison problems, California’s prison system has developed a promising new educational approach that may serve as a blueprint for other states, reports Wayne D’Orio for The Hechinger Report.
In an investigation for EdSurge, Emily Tate examines a disturbing side of the thriving online English-tutoring market.
Trump Picked the Perfect Education Secretary in Betsy DeVos
For all the years since Jimmy Carter picked Shirley Hufstedler in 1979 to be the first holder of the title, it’s been a tradition for the U.S. education secretary to address the annual gathering of the hundreds of journalists covering their department. Two years ago, Betsy DeVos, who’d recently been confirmed as President Donald Trump’s education secretary, turned down an invitation from the Education Writers Association. The next year she did so again, raising the possibility that she might be the first person with the job to snub the organization altogether in almost 40 years.
American Federation of Teachers Sues Betsy Devos Over Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program
The American Federation of Teachers, one of the country’s biggest teachers unions, sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday alleging gross mismanagement of a loan forgiveness program for public servants.
June 28 – July 11
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For The Washington Post, Jessica Contrera chronicles a hate crime at a Maryland high school, and the emotional reckoning that followed.
Latino children make up nearly half of Boston’s public school students, yet the collective voice of their parents does not loom large in the system, reports Bianca Vázquez Toness for WGBH.
After Biting Report, Providence Looks to Lift Failing School District
Brown tap water. Student brawls. Chronically absent teachers. Test scores that rank among the worst in the country.
The public school district here is full of deplorable conditions, according to a recent scathing report by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. Now the capital city, proud of its downtown renaissance, restaurants and arts scene, faces a painful reckoning as it is debating what to do with a failing school system that serves 24,000 children, who are mostly poor and Hispanic.
Teen Hate Crime: Swatiskas, Racist Graffiti Divide A Maryland High School
The principal saw a swastika first. It was inky black, spray painted on a trash can just beside the entrance to the high school. David Burton switched off the engine of his SUV, unaware, even then, of the magnitude of what he was about to see.
Study: When ICE and Local Police Cooperate on Immigration Enforcement, Hispanic Student Enrollment Drops
MORE THAN 300,000 Hispanic students have been displaced from K-12 schools in communities where local police have forged partnerships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to better enforce immigration laws, according to a new study from researchers at Stanford University.
Colleges Call For More Clarity On Rules Requiring Disclosure of Foreign Gifts and Contracts
As Education Department opens investigations into whether universities complied with law requiring federal reporting of foreign gifts and contracts, colleges call for more clarity on what the law requires.
June 21 – June 27
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
For NOLA.com and The Times Picayune, Wilborn Nobles III explores the complex state of school discipline reform in New Orleans where expulsions are down but suspensions are up.
In project that took him from Oklahoma to England — and supported in part by an EWA Reporting Fellowship – Ben Felder explores the promise of higher education programs in prisons in a series for The Oklahoman.
Two Catholic Schools Were Asked to Fire Gay Teachers. Here’s What They Did
The Indianapolis archbishop has ordered Catholic high schools in the city to dismiss teachers who are married to someone of the same sex, or sever ties with the archdiocese.
‘No Exceptions, No Questions Asked’: Progressives Propose Legislation Canceling All Student-Loan Debt
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ilhan Omar on Monday proposed legislation to cancel all federal and private student-loan debt, carried by about 45 million Americans.
Sanders’s proposal also calls for free tuition and fees at two- and four-year public colleges, and $1.3 billion a year to support students at historically black colleges and universities. Sanders, a Vermont Independent, proposed paying for the plan through taxes on Wall Street transactions in stocks, bonds, and derivatives.
June 14 – June 20
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
The nation’s seventh-largest school district is embarking on a massive effort to address students’ challenges outside the classroom, reports Jacob Carpenter for the Houston Chronicle.
For The Christian Science Monitor, Stacy Teicher Khadaroo examines a historic vote at Georgetown University and what it reveals about the national dialogue over a call for reparations for slavery.
How Teach for America Evolved Into an Arm of the Charter School Movement
When the Walton Family Foundation announced in 2013 that it was donating $20 million to Teach For America to recruit and train nearly 4,000 teachers for low-income schools, its press release did not reveal the unusual terms for the grant.
Immigrants Brought Riches to Urban Schools. Now They’re in the Shadows.
The influx of poor immigrant families brought a flood of resources as the school’s official poverty rate rose above 90 percent: an after-school program, three interpreters and a steady infusion of federal funding.
But in recent years, as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown began to reverberate through the nation’s public schools, the students who had been such a fiscal asset have turned into a budgetary liability.
June 7 – June 13
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
A plan to close a predominantly black high school in Michigan is unfolding as the first crisis of Gretchen Whitmer’s governorship, writes Jennifer Chambers for The Detroit News.
The Rivard Report’s Emily Donaldson examines how a lack of paid maternity leave can create challenges for Texas teachers planning a family.
Inside the Elementary School Where Drug Addiction Sets the Curriculum
The classroom is becoming the battleground in the war against drug addiction where the next generation will be saved or lost in Ohio, which in 2017 had the second highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in the country.
Student Outcomes: Does More Money Really Matter?
If American taxpayers were to fork out a couple billion more on top of the $650 billion they annually spend on public schools, would academic outcomes improve?
Senator Offers Legislation to Respond to Admissions Scandal
Donations — many of them anything but charitable — are at the heart of the admissions scandal. Using a sham foundation, parents paid off coaches, in part with donations to their programs. Then the donors’ sons and daughters ended up on lists of recruited athletes, easing their admission to competitive colleges. Everything was fake. The foundation was a tool for money laundering.
Educators Worry a Census Citizenship Question Would Lead to Less Funding
The anticipated undercount of people and poverty, driven by the reluctance of immigrant communities and Hispanic households to complete the census if the citizenship question is included, is expected to have a devastating impact on federal K-12 funding for school districts that serve the most vulnerable students.
Ahead of the high court’s decision, educators across the country are bracing themselves for billions of dollars in critical resources that could be lost and they’re scrambling to develop ways to minimize the undercount.
May 31 – June 6
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
Despite privacy concerns, America’s schools are increasingly monitoring students’ online lives, reports Education Week’s Benjamin Herold.
WAMU’s Jenny Abamu continues exploring schools’ use of restraint and seclusion, and why it often goes unreported.
For USA Today, Erin Richards and Matt Wynn examine how teachers’ salaries stack up to the cost of living in cities across the country.
Baltimore Redux: Students Bring Positive Perspective To City’s Story
Ma’kayla Hill rocks on her pink and white sneakers as she presents her poster. On one side, her stick-figure cartoons depict the way people often see Baltimore: A man shoots a boy who owes him money; the victim’s sister runs to get their mother; her speech bubble reads, “OMG My Son.” “But my perspective of Baltimore City is everyone having fun … at our friend’s house or at a playground,” the eighth-grader says, pointing to the other side, with drawings of kids on swings. “Baltimore can be a wonderful place once we all come together.”
How Democrats Got Radical on the Cost of College
The presidential-election cycle has barely begun but one thing is already clear: The Democratic candidates want to talk about student debt. No surprise there; the trillion-dollar student-loan bubble has captured the national imagination in ways few higher-education issues have, and candidates are essentially obligated to have a plan to address it.
Rutgers Defunded Daily Targum Paper After It Called Out White Supremacist Propaganda
Rutgers University’s daily student paper lost its financial backing last month, after a conservative group that called the paper “fake news” led a two-year campaign to defund it. Now a major campus civil liberties organization is calling the defunding unconstitutional.
Washington Was One Of The Last States To Require High School-exit Exams. Now Seniors Can Apply For A Waiver To Graduate On Time.
Washington has remained one of just a dozen states that require students to pass high-stakes exams to earn a high-school diploma. That’s about to change: Starting with the class of 2020, high schoolers will no longer have to clear the standardized tests to graduate on time.
Report: Teacher Mindsets: How Educators’ Perspectives Shape Student Success
This report explores the critical importance of “teacher mindsets,” or teachers’ attitudes, beliefs, and practices, in fortifying students’ investment in learning. We profile several schools in the forefront of that work, schools that have begun to use the new findings on teacher mindsets to shift adult belief and behaviors in ways that strengthen students’ view of themselves as learners and their motivation to learn.
Ole Miss Preschool Got $850K From Mississippi Legislature
As Mississippi lawmakers struggle to fund public pre-K programs, they have funneled nearly a million dollars of state education money to a preschool in Oxford that charges about $6,000 a year in tuition.
Another Way Wealthy Parents Game College Admissions: Extra Time On The SAT and ACT
Wealthy parents illegally paying bribes so their kids could get extra time to take the SAT or ACT exam is a central part of the college admissions scandal. And while what Caplan and other accused parents did is illegal, higher education analysts say students living in affluent, suburban towns like Greenwich are much more likely to get extra time — legally. In 2011, The College Board, the nonprofit that runs the SAT, received 80,000 requests for extended time. Five years later, that number doubled to 160,000.
Virginia College Students Sue DeVos For Reinstating Controversial For-Profit College Accreditor
When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reinstated a controversial accrediting agency in April 2018, she threw a lifeline to Virginia College, a chain of for-profit schools that some higher education experts said should have closed.
Black Students in Charter Schools Are More Likely to Have Black Teachers
Black students in charter schools are more likely to have black teachers than their peers in traditional public schools, which can lead to academic gains in math, a new study shows.
The study published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank that also authorizes charter schools in Ohio, examined data from grades 3 to 5 in North Carolina’s traditional and charter public schools, from 2006-07 through 2012-13.