Thoughts for a Christmas Morning
"Random acts of kindness are those little sweet or grand lovely things we do for no reason except that, momentarily, the best of our humanity has sprung, exquisitely, into full bloom... You are doing what the best of your human soul invites you to do... In giving...
Young People’s Views and Plans, 2021 and Beyond
Mary Martin’s Peter Pan sang about perpetual youth, boldly shouting, “I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up. Not me! Not I!” seemingly speaking for our kids today. Makes one wonder: “Will they ever grow up?” Adulting actually became Grammar Girl’s 2014 Word...
Question: What is the significance of September 25, 1789?
On September 17,1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention finally signed the Constitution after months of deliberation. Two years later, on September 25, Congress approved the first twelve amendments to the document. The first ten became the Bill of...
Catherine Rampbell’s Old-School Teacher, Mr. Greco: We Should All Be So Lucky!
Believing that teaching is supposed to be: well-versed and subject-centered, not political, brings me to columnist Catherine Rampbell's, “Priceless Lessons from My Sixth-Grade English Teacher.” In the piece, she gives Mr. Greco “much of the credit (or, depending on...
At What Cost Our Embrace of Tech on Our Kids
Back in February2021, News Wise reported that, “As teens' use of social media has grown over the past decade, so too has the suicide rate among younger people." Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among those ages 10 to 34. Many have suggested that social...
In and Out of School, Screened-In Lives Put Kids at Risk
Says the All Kids Bike Panel: “Kids and teens age 8 to 18 spend an average of more than seven hours a day looking at screens. The new warning from the AHA recommends parents limit screen time for kids to a maximum of just two hours per day. For younger children, age...
COVID’s Relentless Hold on Schools and Their Added-On Responsibilities
We all said 2021 would be different than locked down 2020. Vaccines were coming on the scene, the world reopened, and life as we knew it would be ours again. Except it isn’t... Districtadministrator.com’s Mark Zalaznicki, in his September 28 piece, “School Closings...
Why the Union League is honoring the great patriot, abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass with a new portrait, by John Meko, Jr.
On September 14, 2021, The Union League Legacy Foundation unveiled a new painting, a portrait of the great abolitionist and patriot Frederick Douglass. The event comes during a time when Douglass’ beliefs and values, including natural rights, limited government and...
America’s Schools, Teachers, and Students: The Stats
According to current National Education Association data, the 3 highest and lowest teacher salaries: New York: $87,738 Massachusetts: $86,315 California: $85,892 South Dakota: $49,993 Florida: $49,583 Mississippi: $47,655 According to 2017-18 data from the National...
Devil Tech or Saving Grace?
Tech, the end all and be all of American life, has revolutionized everything from how we get our meals, shop, learn, and be entertained, and, in the process, we’ve made the providers rich, including the billions spent by schools to be on the cutting edge of...
Remote Instruction: The Costly Learning Downside
Look up remote in a thesaurus, and you’ll find not just the usual distant and far-off, but also lonely, disconnected, and isolated, perfect descriptors for the distance learning foisted on millions of students in March 2020 when America was locked down, schools...
Standardized State Tests: Waste of Time or Effective Measure of Student Performance?
The ball got rolling with President George W. Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), next made its way to Obama’s Common Core Standards (CCS) online assessments and 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and then landed on Biden’s lap. He, despite a year of...
Did Pandemic Ed Tech Get It All Wrong?
Writing that “getting ed tech wrong would be a bitter pandemic legacy, American Enterprise resident Scholar and Education Policy Studies director Rick Hess cites several examples of bad ed-tech habits that developed during the lockdown “compromising instruction and...
What Keeps Teachers from Quitting?
Back on May 4, Education Week’s Sarah Schwartz wrote, “Teaching has long been a profession with long hours and low pay. Compared to other jobs that require a similar level of education and training, teachers make less money. Still, many educators will say they didn’t...
Quality Counts Grades the States, the Country, on the Chance-for-Success Index
Quality Counts grades all 50 states and the country, too, on what’s known as the Chance-for-Success Index, resulting in "a snapshot of a person’s prospect of successful outcomes over a lifetime, from early childhood to adulthood and the working world.” To accomplish...
Is Pandemic Learning Loss for Real?
Education Week’s Sarah D. Sparks took on the question, “How Much Real Learning Time Are Students Losing during the Pandemic?” She writes… Unfortunately, a series of new analyses suggest that the pandemic disrupted both of the most critical kinds of educational time....
Substitute Teacher Shortages and Disconnected Homeless Students
An August 2020 National Education Association survey found that: 28% of educators said the pandemic made them likelier to leave teaching. Meanwhile, back in mid-November, the EdWeek Research Center survey of a nationally representative sample of 913 pre-K educators--...
The Toll Exacted by Learning & Living Remotely
Thanks to the COVID vaccine, the light is on at the end of the tunnel, but it’s still a long way off and for many kids that translates into more on and off again remote instruction, with mental health and more on the chopping block… Turns out that 39% of districts...
A Must Read: Superintendent Gibson’s Snow Day Letter
It snowed a lot in the northeast last week, making for a perfect snow day, a time to unleash kids and teachers alike from devices of all sorts to play--making snow balls, snowmen, snow angels, and maybe get in some sledding, too. But the likes of Philadelphia School...
Screened-In, Kids Lose Out Educationally, Socially, & Emotionally
Stuck at home and screened-in for much of the day, kids are paying a huge price in the fight against COVID-19--but they're not the super-spreaders. Still, many, including a number of teachers, are all in with remote instruction, but justifiably so? Give a listen:...
