A Timely Social Media Alert
Before COVID-19 became the grim story of the day, every day, Common Sense Media surveyed young people about social media and found that: 56% said tech and social media “are tearing us apart more than they are bringing people together." About 25% agreed that...
Education Week & the Quality Counts Education-Wise State Ratings: How’d Yours Do?
From the time before we closed our schools and hunkered down against COVID-19, fearful and cautious, this Quality Counts report card was published on how the states fare when it comes to schooling, rating them on three categories: Chance for Success School Finance...
Schooling’s Piece of the $2.2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Package: A Glimpse
The good news is that yesterday, in a bi-partisan move, senators passed the largest stimulus package in American history to the tune of $2.2 trillion, offering much-needed financial aid to health care systems, workers, and businesses—and that includes our nation’s...
USA Today Lends Us A Flu and COVID-19 Pandemic Perspective
With thanks to USA Today and Kurt Snibbe of the Southern California News Group, some facts and figures to remind us that, we can, indeed, weather this... After all, we're in this together, so should stick together, follow all guidelines and stop pointing figures,...
Kids and Video Games: Moms and Dads Have Their Say
Kids are hooked on screens, no doubt about it, with some spending hours on end playing video games--some 41% of boys and 21% of girls, and that prompted Oxford University to study the effects. Among the findings: Spending up to three hours a day has no effect, good...
The Problem with Literacy Programs, by Make Schmoker
Recently, author, speaker, and consultant Mike Schmoker's took on current literacy programs. He writes: A cautionary tale: Not long ago, I was assisting a school district that had adopted a prominently endorsed literacy program. Our work began with a review of the...
The Cornonavirus: What It Is, Where It is, and What Educators Should Know
Talk about scary news: As of March 2: The coronavirus had spread to more than 60 countries. More than 85,000 have been infected worldwide. It is responsible for some 3,000 deaths, more than 2,800 in Mainland China So, what exactly is a coronavirus and how did it get...
Our Dazzling, Complex Brains: Facts to Keep in Mind!
A reminder of the magic that is in all of us—and the potential to be more than we ever thought… Your brain weighs about three pounds—about 2% of your total body weight. A computer with the capacity of your brain would be 100 stories tall and cover the entire state of...
A+ World Academy Announces Private Meeting Dates to Learn More About Unique Gap Year Program for High School Students
With thanks to Dr. Kevin E. Kessler, am sharing this press release about A+ Academy's one-of-a-kind, year-long learning opportunity for high schoolers aboard the world's oldest, fully rigged tall ship, the Norwegian Sorlandet. It sails to 20 cities in 14 countries......
Artificial Intelligence Takes Over Routine Teacher Tasks, But Buyer Beware?
New York Times journalist Craig S. Smith’s recent “The Machines Are Learning and So Are the Students,” explains that artificial intelligence has found its way into the teaching life by taking over such mundane tasks as grading. It is, indeed, a brave new world, and,...
Killer Suicide
Suicide is now the 2nd leading cause of death among 10- to 19-year-olds, and yet… While the National Institutes of Health spent $68 million last year on suicide, that was less than was spent on many other public health issues. For instance, kidney disease kills about...
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...
