Joanne Jacobs
'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...
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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