1. In a recent ACTA poll of more than 3,000 college grads, just 15% of them think America is the greatest country on Earth, while about 50% think hard work doesn’t guarantee success. PLUS:
** Only 31% knew that James Madison was the Father of the Constitution.
** Only 37% knew that John Roberts is Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
** Only 28% knew that the 13th Amendment forbid slavery
2. A new National Center for Education Statistics finds that:
** 32% of K-12 students were behind their grade level in June, 2024, with a high of 39% in the west.
3. According to a new Rand Corporation report:
** 44% of 3-8 grade teachers said their students are “always or nearly always having difficult reading their written instructional materials.”
** 40% said they “had misconceptions about how students develop word reading skills.
** 46% said their “primary” source of knowledge about reading instruction comes from their classroom experiences.
** Just 22% cited professional development as their primary source.
** Only 10% cited colleagues and mentors.
4. A recent Gallop poll found that…
** Of the 1,015 parents surveyed, 55% “were completely or somewhat dissatisfied with the quality of their schools this past year.
5. According to a Rand & CRPE analysis:
**In 2018, chronic absenteeism stood at 15%, jumped to 28% in 2022, and now stands at 19%.
** In this 2023-24 school year, some 9.4 million students missed at least 10%–18 days—of the school year, the definition of chronic absenteeism.
** 93% of districts put in place at least one strategy to fight chronic absenteeism.
** 23% of surveyed districts reported that NONE of the strategies they’d tried was particularly effective.
6. According to a recent National Parents Union poll:
** 80% of schools have policies regarding cellphones in the classroom, but many leave it up to individual teachers to make the rules.
** Most parents worry about the harmful impact cell phones have on their children, BUT still want them to have their phones with them in class in case of an emergency
** A solution for many is flip phones: “No compatibility and cheap!”
Says Idaho’s Boise County Sheriff Deputy David Gomez, “Cellphones are a drug, and kids are wired to get addicted. All this new smartphone technology comes at the cost of childhood.”
7. With teachers increasingly using AI for lesson planning and creating assignments, researchers at Stanford and Yale warn that “AI legal research tools supported by Lexis Nexis and Thompson Reuters produce “hallucinations”—incorrect or misleading responses as fact—between 17% and 33% of the time.
~ And so it goes…
With thanks, Carol
(carol@schoolwisebooks.com)
