— Summer Reading Survey School librarians want to drop To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn from summer reading lists, according to a survey by School Library Journal and National Council of Teachers of English, writes Chris Queen on PJ Media. Number one on the list is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, apparently because Atticus Finch is a “white savior.” The book also topped another list, PBS’ 2014 survey of Americans’ best-loved novels, writes Quee

Photo: Aspen Institute Project Play Sofia Velasquez, 15, enjoys playing soccer for her Chicago high school, but games keep getting canceled because rival teams can’t field enough players. Credit: Aspen Institute 2021 “Student interested in school sports has nosedived since the start of the pandemic,” reports Ariel Gans for Education Week. Nearly 3 in 10 students who were athletes pre-pandemic are no longer interested in playing organized sports, according to a poll by the Asp

Grading students based on effort rather than achievement is spreading from P.E. class to academic classes in high schools, but in colleges, writes Adam Ellwanger on the Martin Center blog. contract” or “labor-based” grading is “the latest front in a larger war on intellectual excellence, where the focus has now moved from lowering standards to eliminating them,” Ellwanger writes. He teaches English at a university that serves many first-generation students who face significan

High school rigor is often a facade, writes Natalie Wexler on Forbes. It’s a “Potemkin village.” High school graduates in the class of 2019 took more “advanced” and “honors” classes and earned higher grades, but didn’t do any better on tests, notes a recently released federal study. Grade inflation and course-title inflation combine to create the illusion of competence. Some school districts, seeing a lack of minority representation in honors classes, have tried to solve the