- Even before they start school, inner-city students are often beset by huge learning obstacles—from the infamous thirty-million-word gap to the perils of urban violence—that need to mitigated by overtaxed districts. There’s a morbid irony, therefore, in new findings suggesting that these kids face the additional danger of poisoning once they walk into school. Nationwide testing in the wake of the Flint crisis has revealed distressing levels of lead contamination in school systems from Los Angeles to Newark. The problem has gone largely undetected for years because the only statute governing lead levels in public water supplies is a grossly inadequate 1991 EPA rule. Countless district facilities around the country are exempted from its language, and their lead-lined pipes and water coolers are spreading pollutants that are known to damage children’s bodily organs and stunt intellectual development. Disadvantaged families need to know that their kids are safe at school, not at risk of sustaining irreversible biological harm.
- We all know the hallmarks of a typical civics lesson: dust-dry soliloquys about the Virginia Plan versus the New Jersey Plan, yellowed daguerreotypes of Abraham Lincoln, and melodically flaccid episodes of Schoolhouse Rock. If there were any class period that could use some sprucing up from goodhearted techies, it’s probably this one. So we can be grateful for iCivics, an education nonprofit founded by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The group works with designers to develop civics-based video games like Win the White House, which challenges students to concoct their own presidential candidates and platforms. As she puts it, O’Connor was driven to start the organization by the disturbing numbers of “adults who don’t know anything about civics” (yes, Madam Justice, we know). There are loads of untapped potential in digital play, which holds an instinctive appeal for children and is versatile enough to impart skills and knowledge from a variety of disciplines. For more on the subject, check out Fordham’s 2015 discussion with author and game enthusiast Greg Toppo.
- One of the biggest knocks against common academic standards and assessments is delivered by state legislators, who claim that educational expectations in Indiana (or Massachusetts, or Utah) should be unique to the state itself. I don’t really credit the validity of that idea (last time I checked, algebra in the Rockies doesn’t differ from algebra on Cape Cod), but there’s another issue to consider: For students who move to new schools in different states, uniformity is actually a boon, ensuring that they aren’t rehashing familiar material or plunged into bewildering new coursework. It was probably inevitable, then, that a Common Core advocacy group would spring up among parents who serve in the armed forces. Since military families tend to relocate between six and nine times during their children’s K–12 years, our national patchwork of wildly disparate school quality can pose a unique challenge. With Common Core gradually becoming accepted in nearly every state, though, our soldiers, sailors, and airmen won’t have to worry so much when the rental van pulls into the driveway.
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