Joanne Jacobs
Education's middle ground is 'vanishing'
When schools closed in 2020, support for schools remained strong, but the public's faith in the quality of their local schools has...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 16
- 1 min
Black male teachers are not security guards
If schools want more black male teachers, principals will have to let them be teachers — not security guards — writes Durrell Burns....
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 13
- 1 min
Second wave of learning loss is coming in ’23-24
Students learned a lot less in remote classes, test scores show. “The achievement loss is far greater than most educators and parents...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 11
- 2 min
Kids, you’re not ‘stamped’
Moshe K. Levy considers himself “pro-human” rather than “anti-racist,” he writes on FAIR’s site. So he’s not a fan of Ibram X. Kendi’s...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 31
- 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...
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,...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 10
- 2 min
Causing discomfort remains legal
Lessons that cause students discomfort remain legal everywhere, even in Florida, writes Peter Minowitz, a Santa Clara University...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 10
- 2 min
What’s ‘age appropriate’ for young students?
Parents and teachers want lessons to be “age appropriate,” but disagree on when children are ready for painful topics, writes Marta W....
Joanne Jacobs
- May 9
- 1 min
Teaching about racism: Americans are divided
Americans agree that schools should teach about historic racism and slavery, but divided on present-day racism, writes Matt Barnum on...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 5
- 2 min
Is social-emotional learning a Trojan horse?
While social-emotional learning sounds “positive and uncontroversial” in theory, “in practice, SEL serves as a delivery mechanism for...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 22, 2020
- 2 min
Closing the Racial Achievement Gap, Or Not
A contrarian view, to be sure, but I can’t say the author’s wrong: In 2015, MCPS (Montgomery County, MD, Public Schools) embarked on a...
Joanne Jacobs
- Apr 29, 2019
- 1 min
Segregation?
What are the possible explanations for this phenomenon? But more troubling, and often less discussed, is the modern-day form of...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 18, 2018
- 1 min
If schooling was as important as football
Vesia Hawkins loves football, she writes on Volume & Light, which follows Nashville schools. This year, she’s taking her young cousin to...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 17, 2018
- 2 min
Black boys lack ‘a teacher who looks like me’
Boys do better with male teachers and non-white students better with a same-race teacher, studies show. Yet, 77 percent of teachers are...
Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 3, 2018
- 1 min
Why black teachers quit
“In recent years, there’s been an increased push to get more teachers of color into the classroom, often highlighting large gaps between...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 17, 2018
- 2 min
New Orleans improves — a lot
“After Katrina’s devastation, New Orleans embarked on the the most ambitious education overhaul in modern America,” writes David...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 16, 2018
- 2 min
Less discipline, more disorder
– Education Next 2015 The Obama-era push to reduce suspensions of black students ended up hurting black students, writes Gail Heriot, a...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 5, 2018
- 1 min
Is this the end of race-based admissions preferences?
The Trump administration has revoked Obama-era guidelines calling for colleges to use race in admissions. In a joint letter Tuesday, the...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 6, 2018
- 3 min
Does babytalk matter? Word gap wrangle
By the age of three, children growing up in poverty hear 30 million fewer words than the children of educated parents, concluded a study...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 28, 2018
- 2 min
An Evergreen Headline
Remember Evergreen State College in Washington and the “no whites allowed” fracas of last year? Has it perhaps harmed the school’s...