May - 2022

Thinking and Linking

More Michigan 3rd graders fail reading test

Joanne Jacobs

May 31
2 min

More Michigan 3rd graders fail reading test

Third graders who are a year behind in reading are supposed to repeat the grade under Michigan’s “read by grade three” law, but few are held back, reports Tracie Mauriello on Chalkbeat. This year, with nearly all students tested, 5.8 percent of third graders are at least one grade level behind, an increase of 60 percent from last year. Parents can request exemptions, writes Mauriello. Last year, “administrators granted them liberally, holding back only 0.2% of those eligible

Want to be antiracist? Teach kids to read

Joanne Jacobs

May 30
2 min

Want to be antiracist? Teach kids to read

Education Week reports that a growing number of school districts are asking would-be teachers: “What have you done personally or professionally to be more antiracist?” “Once you learn to read, you will forever be free,” wrote Frederick Douglass. Photo: Everett Collection/Newscom The best answer, writes Kay Hymowitz in City Journal, is: Teach black children to read. Nationwide, 52 percent of black children read below basic in fourth grade, according to federal data, with Hispa

Remember

Joanne Jacobs

May 30
1 min

Remember

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. — Laurence Binyon, 1914 #MemorialDay

Ukrainians, but not Afghans, get fast track to U.S.

Joanne Jacobs

May 30
1 min

Ukrainians, but not Afghans, get fast track to U.S.

Ukrainian refugees are getting a warmer welcome than Afghans, according to a group of refugee advocates and Democratic senators, writes Ilya Somin in Reason. Ukrainian refugees crossing into Poland. Photo: Wikipedia The Biden administration’s Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) program “offered Ukrainians a limited form of private refugee sponsorship” not available to Afghans, writes Somin, a law professor at George Mason University. While Ukrainian refugees are fast-tracked, Afghans m

‘Refugee High’ copes with Afghans

Joanne Jacobs

May 29
2 min

‘Refugee High’ copes with Afghans

Omar, who had little schooling in rural Afghanistan, is learning English at Chicago’s Sullivan High School. Photo: Taylor Glascock/WBEZ My mother’s old high school in Chicago (class of ’44), Sullivan High, has become “Refugee” High School, reports Elly Fishman for WBEZ. An influx of Afghan students — some of whom have very little schooling in any language — poses educational and cultural challenges. Social worker Josh Zepeda specializes in helping immigrant students, who make

(Non-mass) murders are way up

Joanne Jacobs

May 29
2 min

(Non-mass) murders are way up

The U.S. murder rate spiked in 2020 and 2021, reports German Lopez in the New York Times. Cleaning up vacant lots and creating gardens lowered the crime rate in Philadelphia neighborhoods. The pandemic, which closed schools and disrupted lives, may be one factor, he writes. In addition, “the fallout from the 2020 racial justice protests and riots” played a role, he writes. “Police officers, scared of being caught in the next viral video, may have pulled back on proactive anti

School shootings are horrible — and very rare

Joanne Jacobs

May 28
2 min

School shootings are horrible — and very rare

Terrifying parents and children is not useful: School massacres are “exceptionally rare” events, writes John Tierney in City Journal. They “occurred more often in the 1990s than recently — but back then, there wasn’t an army of satellite trucks competing around the clock to chronicle the horror.” Miah Cerillo, 11, survived the Uvalde massacre by smearing herself with a classmate’s blood to “play dead.” “What’s increasing and is out of control is the epidemic of fear,” says Ja

Excellent lambs

Joanne Jacobs

May 27
2 min

Excellent lambs

Photo: Jonathan Borba/Pexels In the 1960s, campus protesters rejected adult authority, writes William Deresiewicz. Now the “young progressive elite” want the grownups to protect them from emotional and psychological harm, writes William Deresiewicz on Bari Weiss’s Common Sense Substack. Not much has changed since he wrote Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of America’s Elite in 2013, he writes. We are back to in loco parentis, in fact if not in law. College is now regarded as

School shooters don’t just ‘snap’

Joanne Jacobs

May 27
2 min

School shooters don’t just ‘snap’

School shooters don’t just “snap,” journalist Mark Follman, author of Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America, tells Greg Toppo on The 74. In many cases, the subject has not committed a crime, he says. Threat-assessment teams are deal with “cries for help” from “young individuals who are in crisis, who may be suicidal, filled with rage, despairing, and they’ve developed an idea that they don’t have any other solution to their problems, and that th

#1 school for rigor is charter on Mexican border

Joanne Jacobs

May 26
2 min

#1 school for rigor is charter on Mexican border

At IDEA McAllen College Prep, a charter school near the Mexican border, 77 percent of students come from low-income families and nearly all are Mexican-American. IDEA McAllen ranks first in the nation on Jay Mathews’ 2022 Challenge Index, he writes in the Washington Post. The index measures the percentage of students taking rigorous courses and exams, rather than test scores. Alejandro Castillo, a student at IDEA McAllen, won first place for microbiology at a University of Te

Young males in trouble

Joanne Jacobs

May 26
1 min

Young males in trouble

We are failing our young men, argues podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey. That’s the one commonality in the vast majority of mass shootings. It’s not race or ideology. They’re young males. We are doing absolutely everything wrong when it comes to promoting healthy masculinity, purpose, & goodness for these boys and men. If we really cared, we would be doing EVERYTHING we can to promote fatherhood, hard work, & honor. We’d be getting these boys off the internet and into hobbies and j

The making of a mass murderer

Joanne Jacobs

May 25
2 min

The making of a mass murderer

The shooter in the Uvalde, Texas school massacre was “a lonely 18-year-old who was bullied over a childhood speech impediment, suffered from a fraught home life and lashed out violently against peers and strangers,” reports the Washington Post. Amerie Garza, 10, was killed with her classmates and teachers on May 24. His father was absent. His mother, relatives said, was addicted to drugs. A friend recalls him driving around town shooting at strangers with a BB gun. Apparently

‘Incompetence, arrogance, woke rhetoric’

Joanne Jacobs

May 25
2 min

‘Incompetence, arrogance, woke rhetoric’

The San Francisco school board’s vote to abolish merit-based admissions at Lowell High School amidst claims merit is “racist” angered many parents and Lowell alumni. Bluer-than-blue San Francisco isn’t turning red, I write in a story on the school board recall in San Francisco, now up on Education Next. Residents of nearly every neighborhood voted overwhelmingly on February 15 to recall Gabriela López, Allison Collins, and Faauuga Moliga. The recall “was launched and supporte

22 weeks of lost learning

Joanne Jacobs

May 24
2 min

22 weeks of lost learning

Remote students’ learning losses are worse than educators are willing to acknowledge, writes Thomas Kane, faculty director of Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, in The Atlantic. Intensive tutoring is the most effective way to help students improve, but it’s hard to scale. It will be very difficult to get these kids caught up. That’s especially true for those in high-poverty schools. One-fifth of U.S. students were enrolled in districts that remained remote for th

Don’t know much about teaching math

Joanne Jacobs

May 24
1 min

Don’t know much about teaching math

Are elementary teachers well prepared to teach math? Many elementary teachers aren’t confident about their math skills, and transmit their anxiety to their students, writes Madeline Will in Education Week. Teacher prep programs don’t spend much time on elementary math, she writes. However, “that’s starting to change,” according to a National Council on Teacher Quality review. Undergraduate programs “now require an average of 19 percent more time for elementary math coursewor

Multiple math paths to where?

Joanne Jacobs

May 24
2 min

Multiple math paths to where?

California’s proposed new math framework offers a “choose-your-own-adventure approach” that is “fundamentally flawed,” argue Jennifer Chayes and Tsu-Jae King Liu, professors of electrical engineering and computer sciences at Berkeley. Collegebound students could choose a data science pathway rather than advanced algebra and precalculus courses, they write. That will shut the door to STEM majors — including data science — in college. “We have seen firsthand how students lackin

Magical thinking on teaching math

Joanne Jacobs

May 23
2 min

Magical thinking on teaching math

We know a lot about how to teach students who have trouble learning math, writes researcher Tom Loveless. Why not use that? Photo: Karolina Grabowska/Pexels California’s new math framework, under attack for slowing down the fast learners, also will fail students who struggle with math, he writes. The What Works Clearinghouse summarizes the research and recommends “systematic instruction” using “clear and concise mathematical language,” “well-chosen representations” and “numbe

Science teachers: Don’t say ‘parent’

Joanne Jacobs

May 23
1 min

Science teachers: Don’t say ‘parent’

Who are these people? Photo: Serrano1004/Pixabay Don’t say “parent,” advises a feature article in the National Science Teaching Association’s magazine. For a fun classroom activity, ask students to come up with new terms such as “gene-givers” or “biological life transmitters,” suggest Sam Long, Lewis Steller and River Suh. Show students that myriad, naturally occurring families exist, such as same-sex swan couples who see 80% of their offspring survive to adulthood compared

Are reading wars over? ‘Balanced literacy’ is a loser

Joanne Jacobs

May 22
2 min

Are reading wars over? ‘Balanced literacy’ is a loser

Teachers were trained to teach students how to guess words they couldn’t read. The reading wars are over, writes Dana Goldstein in the New York Times. Lucy Calkins, the influential leader of the “balanced literacy” camp has retreated, acknowledging that her “wildly popular and profitable” curriculum does not reflect the research on how children learn to read. A rewrite of her reading curriculum, from kindergarten to second grade, includes, for the first time, daily structured

If you want to speak up, you’d better be a saint

Joanne Jacobs

May 22
1 min

If you want to speak up, you’d better be a saint

Princeton’s president wants to fire a tenured classics professor, but claims it’s not because he criticized “anti-racist” proposals, reports Anemona Hartocollis in the New York Times. Joshua Katz teaches classics at Princeton. No, says the university. Joshua Katz is accused of “failure to be totally forthcoming about a sexual relationship with a student 15 years ago that he has already been punished for.” “The message could not be more clear to dissenting voices on the facult