It’s an Education Fact: July 16, 2014
1) Overall, teachers in the largest metropolitan areas were at school 94% of their scheduled hours--but 16% of them were chronically absent, missing 18 or more school days a year. Another 16% missed just 3 or fewer days. 2) A Gallup poll of about 1,900 superintendents...
Making Education News: July 15, 2014
1. In a case brought by 9 students, a California judge has thrown out key state laws governing tenure and other teacher job protections because the current system discriminates against low-income and minority students by giving them ineffective teachers. 2. The two...
Quotable Education Quotes: July 14, 2014
** "The American Statistical Association just slammed the high-stakes 'value-added method' (VAM) of evaluating teachers that has been increasingly embraced in states as part of school reform efforts. VAM purports to be able to take student standardized test scores and...
Education-Related Websites to Visit: July 10, 2014
** http://schoolfamilyeducation.com ~ This site offers thousands of printable activities and games for your kids, plus schooling information and more. ** www.readingrockets.org ~ This site is all about reading--teaching it, helping struggling students, and covering...
It’s an Education Fact: July 9, 2014
1. The U.S. has the second-highest level of child poverty among 35 economically advanced countries--23% vs. Finland's 5.3%. 2. Students and graduate students now owe more than $1 trillion in education loans, putting it right behind the housing debt. 3. The federal...
Making Education News: July 8, 2014
1. Code.org has rolled out its computer-science education programs at 30 school districts across the country, providing curriculum and professional development, as well as mentor teachers. 2. Sean McComb, an English teacher at Patapsco High School and Center for the...
Quotable Education Quotes: July 7, 2014
** "Reading used to mean sitting down with a book and turning pages as a story unfolded. Today it may mean sitting down with a device that offers multimedia experiences and blurs the line between books and toys. All of this has led to a major disruption in how, what,...
Recommended Education-Related Websites: July 3, 2014
** www.factmonster.com ~ This site from Information Please offers up facts on everything from sports and science to math, money, and the world. You'll also find a Homework Center, games, quizzes, an encyclopedia, thesaurus, and more. ** www.scholastic.com/elmers ~...
It’s an Educational Fact: July 2, 2014
Data reveals 1) Charter schools receive an average of $3,509 less per students than those in traditional public schools. 2) Data reveals that by 8th grade, 48% of girls receive a mix of A's and B's compared to 31% of boys. Plus, boys account for 71% of all school...
Making Education News: July 1, 2014
1. The Obama administration has started requiring poorly-performing Head Start providers to compete against other local providers--and win--in order to keep their grants for the next five years. 2. The bi-partisan Success and Opportunity through Quality Charter...
Quotable Education Quotes: 6/30/2014
** "....Very few educators or parents have learning or scholarship in their hearts as the end-game for their children, except in the sense of their kids getting good grades. Most of us would prefer our children become the very best people they can be, capable of...
Education-Related Websites to Visit: 6/26/2014
** http://code.org ~ With its mission to expand participation in computer science, this site believes that "every students in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer programming." ** www.scholastic.com/island of lemurs/ ~ This site explains that...
1) 13 states do not belong to either the PARCC or SBAC Common Core testing consortia, considerably more than at the outset. 2) According to a Gates Foundation survey of 20,000 K-12 teachers, 73% said they're "enthusiastic about implementing the Common Core, and 73%...
Making Education News: 6/24/2014
1. The U.S. Department of Education handed out $53.6 billion in Obama's stimulus money to help K-12 budgets as long was they publicly reported on numerous education indicators, such as the performance of charters and the percentage of high school grads completing...
Quotable Education Quotes: 6/23/2014
** "On Thursday, Secretary of State Arne Duncan informed Washington that he was revoking the waiver that had freed it from impossible-to-meet requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), including the quixotic mandate that 100 percent of students be proficient...
Quotable Quotes: 2/17/2014
** "Parents deserve to have an assessment of their child's progress that is independent of what teachers say on report cards. I also think assessing schools with test score averages is a useful exercise. But I don't like the current fad of rating individual teachers...
It’s an Education Fact: 2/11/2014
1) In a survey of 1,000 principals in 14 states, 80% said they are prioritizing the new Common Core standards for school improvement in the belief they'll provide students with deeper learning and ore meaningful assessments. 2) Three new polls find that just under 11%...
Quotable Quotes: 2/10/2014
** "Let me get this straight: School reformers, including Arne Duncan, are alienating millions of teachers and hurting countless students and their families over a teacher evaluation policy that--using their own prize methodology (ignorant that we may believe it to...
It’s an Education Fact: 2/04/2014
1) The Pioneer Institute finds that transitioning to the Common Core Standards will cost districts approximately $16 billion over 7 years. 2) More than 80% of 1,000 principals from 14 states say they're "prioritizing the Common Core Standards." 3) 72% of our public...
Quotable Quotes: 2/3/2014
** "Modern research indicates that more areas of the brain are engaged when children use cursive handwriting than when they keyboard. We're not thinking this through. It's beyond belief that states have allowed cursive to slip from the standards." ~ Linden Bateman,...
