“Doing math” at a distance
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools. We recently shared this captivating clip of Our Lady Queen of Angels’s Kindergartener Iliana C. teaching her mom number bonds and sentences.
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools. We recently shared this captivating clip of Our Lady Queen of Angels’s Kindergartener Iliana C. teaching her mom number bonds and sentences.
Late last month, a remarkable article appeared in AJPM, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, cautioning that a person’s ACE score is a “relatively crude measure of cumulative childhood stress exposure that can vary widely from person to person.” ACE stands for “Adverse Childhood Experience”; your “A
Over the past few weeks, schools have closed, living rooms have transformed into classrooms, and kitchen tables have become desks. Many parents who typically receive an update on their child’s daily school progress by asking the question, “How was school today?” have been flung into the role of teacher, as districts have moved to various versions of remote learning.
In these uncertain days, with many brick-and-mortar schools shuttered indefinitely, one of Idaho’s leaders in online education has moved in a deliberate and intelligent fashion to transition its brick-and-mortar-based students to online learning.
To throw all or even most of our Covid-19 recovery efforts into remote learning is “shoe bomber” planning: responding to the last attack instead of anticipating the next one. The old normal will be back, and in some places sooner than we think. So let’s think about what that will look like, and whether we will be ready for the foreseeable and dramatic learning loss school districts will face. Plans to make up for lost time require urgency and focus, but should avoid complexity and stay well within the talents and capacity of existing staff.
Amid the plague that surrounds us, essential attention is properly getting paid to the education challenges of out-of-school kids: What can their parents, their schools, and their districts do to compensate for missed classroom time and the learning loss that’s bound to occur between now and the resumption of something resemb
On this week’s podcast, Diane Tavenner, co-founder and CEO of Summit Public Schools, joins Mike Petrilli and Da
No sooner had Michigan closed its public schools than the state Department of Education announced that no distance learning time would count toward the required 180 days of instruction.
Even before the recent coronavirus pandemic, nearly all educators reported going online to obtain instructional materials. Such resources promise to make our instruction better and lives easier.
“Build back better” has become the mantra of post-disaster reconstruction, since the United Nations’ 2006 report, “Key Propositions for Building Back Better.” It points out that disasters can be leveraged as opportunities for change and improvement.
Three separate analyses were published last week on how the coronavirus might affect children’s learning. Echoing a piece I recently wrote, they all conclude that the current school closures could have a devastating impact on student achievement.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act will support millions of workers and industries hard-hit by COVID-19. About $13 billion from the bill will make it to K–12 schools across the country for uses such as classroom cleaning and teacher training. This is a good thing.
Editor’s note: This blog post was first published by Partnership Schools.
With more states and districts foreclosing upon the possibility of in-person learning through the end of the school year, the next few months will tell us a lot about whether our sector can muster the will and skill to overcome the contractual, logistical, and budgetary hurdles required to sufficiently meet the current challenge.
The COVID-19 pandemic is first and foremost a healthcare crisis. But it also causes an identity crisis for schools. The next year and a half will require our education system to constantly reinvent itself in response to rapidly changing needs, and school system leaders will need grace, high expectations, and new mental models for what school can become to best serve students and families.
Given his track record of studying and analyzing the real world of classroom-based instruction, Doug Lemov may not be the person you’d expect to be paving the way forward on online learning. But if you view Lemov’s work through the lens of the entrepreneurial, “find a way” spirit that sparked the modern education reform movement, it makes a little more sense.
The education reform world is beset by many constant refrains. “Give schools more money,” for example, “recruit more highly-trained teachers,” or “schools need more autonomy.” But what do these things actually mean when put into practice? If reform is as easy as that, then why hasn’t someone done it already?
On this week’s podcast, Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffi
I have spent the week having flashbacks to a Friday in 2001 when I sobbed in my classroom. It was the middle of March and I was leaving my teaching job to accompany my future husband on his Navy orders to San Diego. There is plenty to debate about my personal decision to leave mid-year, but that’s far from the point of this piece.
If there were any doubt that the coronavirus pandemic would be disruptive to schools and families, the last few days have put that to rest.
In addition to Bill Damon’s profound essay on “purpose,” Mike’s and my new book, How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools
Two views of social justice underly many debates in K–12 reform, and the differences between them lead to tensions and conflicts in discussions about policy and practice. One is invoked by progressives and geared toward activism and uniformity. The other is invoked by conservatives and—while also encouraging activism—is different in what it aims to accomplish.
Discussion of student discipline has, for the last several years, focused strongly on potentially discriminatory misuse of suspensions and the social
The New York Times is no stranger to initiating debates over curricular content, as the release of the “1619 Project” by the New York Times Magazine last year demonstrates.
This major essay comprises one of the concluding chapters of our new book, "How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools." Levin brilliantly—and soberingly—explains what conservatives have forfeited in the quest for bipartisan education reform. He contends that future efforts by conservatives to revitalize American education must emphasize “the formation of students as human beings and citizens,” including “habituation in virtue, inculcation in tradition, [and] veneration of the high and noble.”
“When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” —Oscar Wilde
Everywhere you look, the science of reading is the toast of the town.
Depending on whom you ask, teacher evaluation is a vital part of helping educators grow and improve, good for some situations but not for others, or a
With so many quick-fixes proposed to raise student achievement, it’s hard to tell who school reform is really for. Is it for superintendents trying to appease their school board? Is it for politicians who need to make themselves look re-electable?
America’s schools have ceded significant ground to trendy nostrums and policy cure-alls that do little to adequately teach young people the skills and knowledge required to realize their full potential and emerge from school as fully-functioning citizens. The latest round of dire NAEP civics and U.S. history scores underscore our continuing failure on the citizenship front.