Education Facts: 9/11/2012
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, public school students enjoy an average of 1.7 hours of recess a week, but 7% to 10% of schools have no recess at all. The national student-teacher ratio rose 4.6% between 2008 and 2010. The Obama...
Teen Sleep Deprivation
Did you know that 69% of our high schoolers don’t get enough shut eye? More specifically, more than 50% get 6 or 7 hours, 10% report getting only 5 hours, and an unsettling 5.9% say they get only 4 hours of sleep on school nights. All that spells trouble. In a CDC...
Quotable Education Quotes: 9/10/2012
On the soon-to-be-released film Won't Back Down with Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhall: "I cred several times despite knowing that this movie was funded by charter school privatizers seeking fistfuls of dwindling education dollars. I cried despite knowing that the...
Quotable Education Quotes: 9/7/2012
"The push for reform has emerged from a growing bipartisan consensus--joined by the Obama administration--that the old advancement model based on tenure and seniority wasn't always working, with union-negotiated agreements viewed as sometimes protecting bad teachers...
Education News Update: 9/6/2912
The Chicago Teachers Union has announced that it will strike on September 10th over pay class size, and a longer school day. The National Education Policy Center has renewed its call to slow the growth of full-tie K-12, Inc. virtual schools until students' academic...
Education-Related Websites to Visit
www.mathcats.com ~ This site offers interactive math-related projects, games, writing contests, story problems, even math arts and crafts and a "magic chalkboard," too. www.madsci.org ~ This site says it "represents a collective cranium of scientists providing answers...
Education Facts: 9/4/2012
The National Education Association, the country's largest teachers' union, has lost 100,000 members since 2010 and expects to lose about 308,000 full-time teachers by 2014. A recent Blackboard Project Tomorrow survey finds that 52% of district administrators support...
Educational Quotes: 9/2/2012
"One reason for the teacher frustration is that the state's [Virginia] math gurus have de-emphasized memorization of 'conceptual thinking.' The same philosophy has crept into English classes, where 'creativity' has been elevated over knowledge of grammar and into...
Education Quotes: 8/31/12
"The push for reform has emerged from a growing bipartisan consensus--joined by the Obama administration--that the old advancement model based on tenure and seniority wasn't always working, with union-negotiated agreements viewed as sometimes protecting bad teachers...
Education News Update: 8/30/2012
The Common Core Technical Core Standards were recently released; they're divided into 16 clusters and 12 overarching, "career-ready" practices. Results on the first National Association of Education Progress (NAEP) of both hands-on and interactive computer-based...
Factually Speaking: 8/28/12
A recent Blackboard Project Tomorrow survey finds that 52% of district administrators support the idea of online classes, up from 33% in 2007. A recent CDW survey found that 71% of students and 77% of teachers say they use laptops or netbooks, smartphones, student...
Educational Quotes: 8/27/12
"NCLB concentrated on achievement gaps and increased accountability for high-need students, but it also encouraged states to lower standards and narrow their curricula, focusing on absolute test scores instead of student growth and gains. The problem was that a school...
Back-to-School Shopping
It's back-to-school marathon shopping time again, with about half of all parents heading to stores right about now. Indeed, the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates that the average family will spend approximately $688.62 this season and, all told, 2012 K-12...
Educational Quotes: 8/24/12
Kids are not test scores." ~ Stephanie Simon, Reuters "There are numerous characters in education: students, teachers, administrators, school boards, parents, and communities, as well as a Greek chorus of educational experts, consultants, and bureaucrats. Teachers are...
Education News Update: 8/23/12
33 states and D.C. have now received NCLB waivers, freeing them from its looming 2014 100% reading and math proficiency mandate. In return are promises to develop and implement reform plans and promote and evaluate teacher effectiveness. The Obama administration is...
Kid-Friendly Websites: 8/22/12
www.littlewritebrain.com ~ Here, children can write and publish their own stories; indeed, the site calls itself "the #1 online storybook creation service." www.nationalgeographic.com ~ This National Geographic site offers a "classroom magazine for kindergarten and...
Factually Speaking: 8/21/12
The top performer on the 2009 PISA was Shanghai, China with a score of 556, while America's 500 was largely unchanged from previous years. However, Asian-Americans came in second with a 541, and white Americans came in sixth with a score of 525. African-American's...
Education Quotes: 8/20/12
"The lines between home and school are continuing to blur with more expections for schools to exercise authority in areas perivously reserved for parents." ~ Max Riley, Superintendent, New Jersey's Randolph School District "We've failed to acknowledge how difficult...
One-third of our children/adolescents either overweight or obese–and consume 30% to 50% of their calories at school. The federal government is set to change all that.
The kindergarten controversy is not about to go away any time soon, as, more and more, school districts across the country turn “the children’s garden” into a full-day affair, complete with reading, writing, arithmetic, and testing. In other words, the new first grade.
