February - 2023

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 28
1 min

'They're here for the Wharton brand, a 4.0 GPA and to party'

Cheating has become the norm for college students, writes Suzy Weiss on Free Press. "Remote learning" during Covid lowered standards and inflated grades. "Remote testing combined with an array of tech tools — exam helpers like Chegg, Course Hero, Quizlet, and Coursera; messaging apps like GroupMe and WhatsApp; Dropbox folders containing course material from years past; and most recently, ChatGPT, the AI that can write essays — have permanently transformed the student experien

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Joanne Jacobs

Feb 28
3 min

Who gets in? Try dartboard admissions

The college admissions race is a waste of time, argues Rick Hess, education policy director of the American Enterprise Institute. Except for degrees that require particular skills, such as engineering or the performing arts, it's time to abolish selective college admissions for undergraduate education, he writes. Colleges could set minimum qualifications, and then use a dartboard to decide who gets in. "It’s time for the Stanfords, Swarthmores, and state flagships to show tha

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Joanne Jacobs

Feb 27
2 min

Seeking the 'science of math' teaching

Basing early literacy teaching on evidence of what works -- the "science of reading" -- has taken off in the last 10 years. Teachers are being trained in the most effective ways to teach foundational reading skills. Districts are adopting research-based curricula. What about math?, asks Holly Korbey on Education Post. Even more students are floundering in math than in reading. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress scores show the greatest loss in math profic

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Catching ChatGPT cheaters is tough: Is it bursty?

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 26
2 min

Catching ChatGPT cheaters is tough: Is it bursty?

Open AI's program to catch chatbot cheaters is very unreliable, write Armin Alimardani and Emma A. Jane on The Conversation. The company admits that its classifier for indicating AI-written text "accurately identifies only 26% of AI-generated text (true positive) while incorrectly labelling human prose as AI-generated 9% of the time (false positive)," they write. Edward Tian, a Princeton computer science major, came up with a more promising option called GPTZero on his winter

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Kill-the-Jews joke? Social justice jargon is not 'restorative'

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 25
2 min

Kill-the-Jews joke? Social justice jargon is not 'restorative'

Days after someone wrote "JEWS NOT WELCOME" on the Walt Whitman High sign, two debate-team members at the Bethesda, Maryland school joked about killing Jews, according to a student complaint, the Washington Post reported. Allegedly the two talked about using challah to lure Jews -- they named specific debate team members -- to the Andaman Islands to be burned at the stake to the sound of Kanye West music and "mosque music," reports the school newspaper, the Black and White. T

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Joanne Jacobs

Feb 24
1 min

Apprenticeships on the rise

BMW’s Rising Scholars program lets 12th-graders launch a pre-apprenticeship in advanced manufacturing, including paid work and training, while finishing high school. The German-style learn-and-earn model is building a skilled workforce in South Carolina, reports Vicki Phillips in Forbes. BMW Manufacturing's Spartanburg plant has been working with local community colleges for years. Now it's starting earlier. Many young people are wary of college costs and eager to start earni

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Beware of 'low-value' colleges, but it's hard to say which programs don't pay

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 24
2 min

Beware of 'low-value' colleges, but it's hard to say which programs don't pay

Will a degree in social work from Middling State U lead to higher earnings? What's the payoff for enrolling in fashion design at Fugly College of the Arts or archaeology at St. Exorbitant? The Biden administration's plan to list "low-financial-value colleges" is strongly opposed by the higher education lobby, reports Katherine Knott on Inside Higher Ed. It's not possible to evaluate postsecondary programs' "qualitative and quantitative" value, argues the American Council on E

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Joanne Jacobs

Feb 23
2 min

Algebra: Gateway or barrier?

“What is so magical about algebra as a math requirement?” asked Eloy Ortiz Oakley, former chancellor of California’s community college system and now head of the College Futures Foundation. For low-income and minority students who aspire to college, it’s a “killing field.” Others see rigorous math, such as eighth-grade algebra, as the gateway to high-paying STEM careers, writes Joe Napolitano on The 74. Eighth-graders in affluent suburbs have a chance to take algebra, then go

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Joanne Jacobs

Feb 23
1 min

Mediocrity for all isn't equity

In Culver City (CA), ninth- and tenth-grade honors classes were eliminated, reports Sara Randazzo in the Wall Street Journal. Officials said "uniform courses . . . will ensure students of all races receive an equal, rigorous education.” Schools in Manassas, Virginia took a different tack, expanding and diversifying gifted classes, reports Elizabeth Heubeck in Education Week. Restricting opportunity masks the problem of unequal achievement, "rejects excellence and increases

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Joanne Jacobs

Feb 22
1 min

Gunmen steal students' sneakers in DC

Students were robbed of their shoes outside their Washington D.C. middle school Friday by three men who said they had a gun, reports Hill Rag. Thieves in the same car had robbed students at a nearby high school minutes earlier. Police say the robbers stole Air Jordan 4's, Alexander McQueen's and black Nike boots from the students. Luis Garcia, 16, is in critical condition at a Denver hospital after being shot outside his high school last week. Classmates asked the Denver City

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Ukrainian refugee girl flees unsafe San Francisco school

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 22
3 min

Ukrainian refugee girl flees unsafe San Francisco school

Yana and her mother fled Ukraine and found a new home with an aunt in San Francisco -- until the 13-year-old girl started Marina Middle School in January. Bullied and robbed, she's quit school, reports Jill Tucker in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Students interrupted classes, jumped on desks, cursed at teachers," Yana told her mother and aunt. "Nothing happened." The newcomer tried to avoid disruptive students, but she became their target. Her cell phone was stolen in the caf

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Rewriting Roald Dahl: Nobody's 'fat' or 'female'

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 21
2 min

Rewriting Roald Dahl: Nobody's 'fat' or 'female'

Characters can be "enormous" and "beastly," but not "fat" or "ugly," in the new sensitivity-edited versions of Roald Dahl's children's books, reports Hayden Vernon in The Guardian. "Female" has been replaced by "woman." Dahl's estate agreed to the changes. Witches are bald beneath their wigs, writes Dahl in The Witches. The editors have added a new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.” While Dahl su

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DC 2nd-graders will study gender roles in Rome, Aksum and China

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 21
2 min

DC 2nd-graders will study gender roles in Rome, Aksum and China

Writing social studies standards is always controversial. Often they're vague and meaningless, but sometimes they're insanely detailed, pretending that students can learn everything about everything. And standards reflect the politics of the day. The District of Columbia's Draft Social Studies Standards, are a "witches brew" of "controversial ideas presented as historical facts" and "anachronistic postmodern concepts," writes Renaud Beauchard. There's little about local issu

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Joanne Jacobs

Feb 20
2 min

DeSantis vs. College Board

Florida schools will not stop offering Advanced Placement classes, whatever Gov. Ron DeSantis suggests. With other rigorous options, such as International Baccalaureate and Cambridge,“it is not clear to me that this particular operator (College Board) is the one that is going to be needed in the future,” said DeSantis, who also mentioned dual-enrollment programs that let high school students take college classes. AP is way too entrenched to be dropped, and most of the classes

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AP African American Studies: None dare call it 'systemic'

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 20
2 min

AP African American Studies: None dare call it 'systemic'

The new Advanced Placement African American studies course was revised after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called it anti-racist "indoctrination," but College Board officials claim it was too "dense" for students -- not too controversial. However, "systemic" and "womanism" are out, reports Nick Anderson in the Washington . "Intersectionality" is down from 19 mentions in the first draft to one, while "reparations" and "incarceration," each with 15 mentions in the first draft, als

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Joanne Jacobs

Feb 19
2 min

Learning is hard

Learning is hard, Dan Willingham tells Laura McKenna. It takes effort. But motivated students can learn effective learning and study skills. A University of Virginia psychology professor, Willingham is the author of a new book, Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy. Cramming the night before the test with music playing in the background is not effective, says Willingham. Writing down everything the teacher says? Also not effective. Highlightin

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Science says: Masking didn't help stop Covid spread

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 18
1 min

Science says: Masking didn't help stop Covid spread

The value of masking during the pandemic was "approximately zero," according to a Cochrane review of high-quality research, reports John Tierney in City Journal. "Neither surgical masks nor N95 masks" -- not to mention cloth masks that many of us wore -- "have been shown to make a difference in reducing the spread of Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses." "The gold standard for medical evidence is the randomized clinical trial, and the gold standard for analyzing this ev

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Sad girls: Social isolation predates Covid

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 18
1 min

Sad girls: Social isolation predates Covid

Fifty-seven percent of teenage girls felt "persistently sad or hopeless" in 2021, reports the Centers for Disease Control. That's double the rate for boys. Feeling "connected" in middle and high school is a "very powerful protective factor,” said Dr. Kathleen Ethier, head of the CDC's adolescent and school health program. When schools closed, those connections were disrupted. We should "expect lockdowns, school closures, and constant fear messaging (including the loathsome fa

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There's no such thing as accurate school lunch data

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 17
2 min

There's no such thing as accurate school lunch data

School lunch data was an inaccurate measure of student poverty, even before the shift to universal eligibility, write Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel and Eric Parsons in Education Next. Now that all students in high-poverty schools are deemed eligible for a free lunch, the data is even more unreliable. In Missouri, the number of students receiving a free or reduced-price lunch is 40 to 50 percent higher than the number who meet eligibility criteria, they estimate. Students whos

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Emotionally fragile college grads say they're not prepared for work

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 16
1 min

Emotionally fragile college grads say they're not prepared for work

People who fell apart under pressure were "nervous in the service," my father used, a World War II veteran, used to say. There are a lot of nervous folks out there, according to a survey by the Marie Christie Institute. Just over half of young professionals said they needed help for emotional or mental health problems in the past year: Women were much more fragile than men. Black (60 percent) and Asian-American (63 percent) respondents were the most likely to say they have go

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