March - 2023

Joanne Jacobs

22 hours ago
2 min

All children can learn -- but how much?

Not all education problems are solvable, if we just try hard enough or spend enough, argues Freddie DeBoer in a column on optimism bias. "At least a half-century of research, spending, policy experimentation, and dogged effort has utterly failed to close the gaps that so vex our political class," he writes. Teachers feel they're blamed when student outcomes are unequal, he writes. It's assumed students who do poorly are the victims of "some sort of error or injustice." Argui

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Conservatives shouldn't give up on public education

Joanne Jacobs

2 days ago
1 min

Conservatives shouldn't give up on public education

Public education is progressive in its goals, yet schools are conservative institutions, writes Robert Pondiscio in National Affairs. Most teachers are not pink-haired, non-binary radicals. They're moderates. In recent decades, left-leaning education activists have pushed too hard on the progressive side of the equation, causing trust in public schools among conservatives to plummet. In turn, many conservatives have escalated their attack on public education — and public-scho

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Joanne Jacobs

2 days ago
2 min

Conservative teachers are quiet

Teachers who are on the political right "speak in whispers behind closed doors," says Daniel Buck in an interview with Rick Hess. "Picking political fights in the teachers’ lounge jeopardizes that professional peace." However, he adds, "most teachers have many values that are traditionally associated with conservatism — local control, smaller bureaucracies, classically influenced curriculum, strict discipline structures — even if they don’t identify as conservatives per se."

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If you have to think about 3x = 18 . . .

Joanne Jacobs

3 days ago
2 min

If you have to think about 3x = 18 . . .

Thinking about everything is hard, writes Greg Ashman, author of Cognitive Load Theory, on Filling the Pail. It exhausts students' extremely limited working memory. What teachers want is for to activate a web of knowledge -- a "schema" -- in long-term memory to solve problems. Alfred North Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher, observed: “It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cu

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Many students need tutoring, but few are getting it

Joanne Jacobs

4 days ago
2 min

Many students need tutoring, but few are getting it

Intensive tutoring is the best way to help students who suffered learning setbacks during the pandemic, but school districts are providing help to only a small fraction of students, report Patrick Wall, Amelia Pak-Harvey and Collin Binkley for Chalkbeat and Associated Press. "A new tutoring corps in Chicago has served about 3% of students," they write. Less than 1 percent were reached in Georgia’s Gwinnett County, Florida’s Miami-Dade County, and Philadelphia. Ten percent of

2 comments

Anti-merit push is alienating Asian voters

Joanne Jacobs

4 days ago
1 min

Anti-merit push is alienating Asian voters

Democrats are losing Asian-American voters, writes Ruy Teixeira on Liberal Patriot. Asians, like Hispanics, are not radicals, he writes. They don't want to remake American society "to cleanse it of intrinsic racism and white supremacy." Instead, "they are far more interested in how they and their families can get ahead in actually-existing American society." Education is very, very important to Asian voters, "who see it as the key tool for upward mobility," writes Teixeira. "

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Florida Atlantic wins upward mobility tournament

Joanne Jacobs

5 days ago
1 min

Florida Atlantic wins upward mobility tournament

Florida Atlantic University beat Memphis in the closing seconds of the first game of the NCAA tournament, and play Farleigh Dickinson today for a shot at the Sweet Sixteen. FAU already has won the March Madness tournament for upward social and economic mobility, writes Jorge Klor de Alva on The 74. He analyzed all the colleges that made the playoffs looking for how well they helped lower-income students improve their financial prospects. "It is important to know which college

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Seattle parents fight homeless camp near school

Joanne Jacobs

6 days ago
1 min

Seattle parents fight homeless camp near school

Seattle parents protested a homeless camp less than a block from their children's elementary school yesterday, reports Jeremy Harris for KOMO News. The Ship Canal Bridge camp near John Stanford International School has a history of violence, fires and drug use. As parents held signs on the 45th street overpass, We Heart Seattle outreach volunteers were confronted by activists who oppose clearing the camp. “We believe sweeping that camp would be a form of harm reduction for ev

3 comments

Joanne Jacobs

6 days ago
2 min

Against self-reliance

Hard work pays off. Even those born in poverty can build a better life. Self-reliance is better than dependence. Not so, argues Alissa Quart, executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, in Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream. Our national focus on self-reliance leads to blaming and "bullying" the poor for their choices, she believes. Emi Nietfeld, who won a Horatio Alger Association scholarship for overcoming adversity (mentally ill

2 comments

Why was Rosa Parks told to move to the back of the bus?

Joanne Jacobs

7 days ago
2 min

Why was Rosa Parks told to move to the back of the bus?

Florida is approving new "anti-woke" social studies textbooks, reports Sarah Mervosh in the New York Times. Some publishers think the state's "Stop W.O.K.E." law requires erasing race. A progressive group found drafts of a reference to Rosa Parks which omitted any mention of why she was told to move to another seat on that bus, and another that tried to talk about the "black code" without mentioning race. The Florida Department of Education issued a statement saying that isn

2 comments

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 16
1 min

Hate those haters

After meeting a Holocaust survivor who's now a refugee from Ukraine, he realized that "hate is interconnected," said Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris' husband at SXSW in Austin, Texas. "Just going to school meetings, you realize the hate that is out there." Comparing frustrated parents to Nazis is not a love-thy-neighbor thing to say. It's a tad, well, hateful.

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Joanne Jacobs

Mar 16
1 min

Make peace, not culture war

"Liberal Patriot" Ruy Teixeira advises Democrats to stop fighting culture wars and make peace with middle-ground voters. For example, most people want "high quality, non-ideological education," he writes. They believe "equality of opportunity" is fundamental, but "equality of outcome is not." Among his common-sense propositions: Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should b

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There is no culture war in education's 'ideological heartland'

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 16
2 min

There is no culture war in education's 'ideological heartland'

Most Americans are realists, not cultural warriors, when it comes to education, writes Bruno V. Manno on Smerconish.com. Two-thirds of Americans live in the "ideological heartland," he estimates, based on bipartisan polling. There is agreement -- or room to negotiate -- on a wide range of issues, such as "expanding career and technical education (CTE), increasing school funding, boosting childcare and early learning, raising teacher pay, and providing families and students

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'Parents can't solve a problem they don't know they have'

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 15
1 min

'Parents can't solve a problem they don't know they have'

Many parents don't realize how badly their children are doing in school, reports AP's Bianca Vazquez Toness. Teachers don't like to deliver bad news or believe low-income parents don't care. A 2022 survey of 1,400 public school parents around the country by Learning Heroes showed 92% believed their children were performing at grade level. But in a federal survey, school officials said half of all U.S. students started this school year behind grade level in at least one subjec

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Sneering at parents isn't a great political strategy

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 15
2 min

Sneering at parents isn't a great political strategy

"Seething contempt for the idea that parents should get a say in their children's education is really not a great political strategy," writes Andrew Rotherham on Eduwonk. Parents vote. In response to Republican Sen. Tim Scott calling for "putting parents back in charge of their kid's education," Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell tweeted: "What are we doing next? Putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials? When did we stop trusting exp

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Why even kids who like to read hate English class

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 14
2 min

Why even kids who like to read hate English class

English teachers are teaching kids to hate reading, writes Pamela Paul, a New York Times op-ed columnist, in response to Nathan Heller's New Yorker story on The End of the English Major. Students dread "painstakingly marking up text with colored pencils in search of 'literary devices' — red for imagery and diction, yellow for tone or mood, etc.," she writes. "Students are instructed to read even popular fiction at an excruciatingly slow pace in the service of close reading in

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When 3rd-graders can't read, should they repeat the grade?

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 13
2 min

When 3rd-graders can't read, should they repeat the grade?

Third graders who read more than a year below grade level will be passed on to fourth grade in Michigan, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is expected to sign a bill repealing the "read or repeat" law. The Republican-backed law contained so many loopholes that fewer than 10 percent of poor readers were retained, reports Jonathan Oosting for Bridge Michigan. Parents could simply ask for their child to be passed on to fourth grade. Critics complained that black and low-inc

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Dropout rate is up: Disrupted teens gave up on school

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 13
1 min

Dropout rate is up: Disrupted teens gave up on school

The high school dropout rate is up, reports Julian Shen-Berro on Chalkbeat. Students who fell behind when classes went virtual feel school is "just too hard," said Megan Facer, a clinical assistant director at Youth Villages. They don't believe they'll ever catch up. “When we reopened, they had to decide, ‘Do I go back to school, where I wasn’t doing that great, and I don’t know what the relevance of it is anyway? Or do I stay in this $20- to $25-an-hour job?” said Steve Dobo

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More young people are skipping college: Is that a crisis?

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 13
2 min

More young people are skipping college: Is that a crisis?

A good student at a good high school, Grayson Hart "believed college was the only route to a good job, stability and a happy life," until remote learning made him a do-it-yourselfer, reports Collin Binkley for AP. He turned down all his college offers -- he was thinking of a musical theater major -- to run a youth theater program in Jackson, Tennessee. “Why do I want to put in all the money to get a piece of paper that really isn’t going to help with what I’m doing right now

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Digital danger: Screen time is stealing childhood

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 12
2 min

Digital danger: Screen time is stealing childhood

Screen time is very bad for kids, argues Michel Desmurget, a French neuroscientist, in Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children. The French title translates as "The Digital Cretin Factory," notes media researcher Andrey Mir in City Journal. Even toddlers average nearly 50 minutes a day on screens, according to Desmurget. Screen time reaches two hours and 45 minutes between the ages of two and eight, four hours and 45 minutes between the ages of eight and 12, a

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