Making School-Wise News: Play Time, Cursive Writing, a Teacher Lawsuit, and More
Some call it progress… Thanks to President Bush’s No Child Left Behind, compounded by Obama’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top and Common Core State Standards, preschoolers are being taught to read, so they’re all ready for kindergarten, aka the “new first grade.” Nancy...
Education Week’s Madeline Will on Public School Education Since 2010
Back in 1903, in Man and Superman, Irish playwright and political activist George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” And it stuck. Fast forward to 1977 when Haywood Allen, better known as director, writer, and actor Woody Allen, wrote, in...
What Futurists Back in 2000 Envisioned for Us in 2020
Back in the early days of the 21st century, futurists made predictions about how the world would look come 2020. Among them was Ray Kurzweil, and recently USA Today’s Grace Hauck shared the hits and misses of twenty of his forecasts: Life expectancy would top 100… It...
Make Gratitude Your 2020 #1 Resolution
It’s that time again when we let go of one year and promise to do better going forward into the new one, keeping fingers crossed on everything from giving up bad habits to spending more face-to-face time with those who matter to us. And that’s all well and good, but...
Teachers and Principals Don’t Always Agree on Schooling Issues
One might assume that principals and teachers working alongside each other would hold similar views about what’s happening in their schools, but not so fast finds a recent Education Week survey: While 52% of teachers said student discipline is “a major source of...
California Takes the Lead on Later School Start Times: Wise or Unwise?
When it comes to education, it’s often a matter of follow the leader, and. In this case, I’m talking about the great state of California and its “bold move to mandate later start times for middle and high schools.” Can the rest be far behind? At first glance, it makes...
School-Wise News Bites: Active Shooter Drills, Homework, Distracting Devices, & Is a High School Diploma Good Enough
Here's a brief update on the latest in the world of education: Because 57% of teens and 63% of parents worry about a shooting happening in their school, just about every public schools conducted some kind of lockdown drill. This, despite the fact that, says a Harvard...
Social Media Not the Only Thing Negatively Affecting America’s Kids
These are, indeed, troubling times for our children… Thanks, at least in part, to the education reform movement that replaced play with an academic push in the pre-school years, Brown University researchers found that incoming kindergartners now start school with...
The Latest in School Testing: Piling On and Cutting Back
Ah, tests, the bane of many and now a deeply entrenched part of schooling in these data collecting days, complete with test prep sessions. About the state-required assessments, while telling kids to relax and just do their best, embedded is also the message that...
Should Parents Be Held Accountable for Their Bullying Kids?
“Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never harm me….” That ditty bolstered a whole of us back when, but nowadays nasty words find their way online, too, potentially causing cause great and endless hurt. Question is, while schools are out there on the...
Helicopter Parents vs. and the Snow Plow Types
As if helicoptering parents weren't enough, there's a new breed of moms and dads nowadays, These so-called "snow plow" types, don't just hover, they remain ahead of the curve removing potential obstacles in their children’s paths to ensure their smooth sailing through...
The Two Types of Childhood Trauma Taxing Educators
As reported by Education Week, school districts are now figuring how best to work with students affected by the two kinds of trauma affecting our children as never before. TYPE I results from a single incident that affects a number of children or even an entire...
The Powerful Attraction of Screen Time and Its Potential Risks
Many parents use screen time as a kid-sitter, enjoying the quiet that descends on their youngsters when in the grip of a video game, social media, a texting exchange, or TV… Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center recently found that, in 2018, 95% of teens own a smartphone...
Education Week’s Alyson Klein Reports: “Digital Tools are Everywhere, But Evidence of Their Impact Is Not
As Education Week's Alyson Klein writes, “ Educators are using digital tools to boost student learning more than ever. But few believe there’s good information available about which resources are going to be effective in the classroom.” And that’s the conclusion of a...
A School-Wise Look at Schooling by the Numbers
From teacher strikes to how best teach reading, these stats tell us a great deal about what's happening to and in our public schools... A recent PDK survey of 556 teachers found that 55% said they’d be willing to strike for better salaries, and even more said they’d...
Experts Take On Everything from Ed Tech and the Value of Play to Our Troubled Children
Those in-the-know speak out … “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” ~ Fred Rogers, TV personality “If I was a spider princess, she said, I would spin...
The American Library Association’11-Most Challenged Books of 2018—and the ReasonsWhy
As reported by USA Today’s Mary Cadden, here are the ALA's most often challenged books of last year… George, by Alex Gino: Said to encourage children “to clear browser history and change their bodies using hormones; for mentioning dirty magazines, describing male...
Vaping: From Smoking Cessation Aid to Killer
Admission: I lit my first cigarette in 7th grade, thrilling to the grown-up feel of it all, as it fed my rebellious side. In other words, I’m in no position to judge kids who light up nowadays, though I pray they never do. What I don’t get at all, however, is the...
Tech Gets Daily In-School Workouts: A Good Thing or Not So Much?
Ed tech continues to change schooling—and our kids too, though maybe not altogether for the good: More than 35,000 Mississippi kindergartners—about 64%--didn’t meet the state’s readiness guidelines, and those who spent the 2017-18 school year in Head Start scored only...
Why High School Kids Don’t Read Anymore, by Jeremy Adams
Jeremy Adams, a high school and college political science teacher in Bakersfied, recently crafted a piece about high school reading in the tech age, and so, with thanks, here are a few excerpts worth reading: Most of us who grew up in the United States before the...
