Joanne Jacobs
It's too noisy for kids to learn
It must be 45 years ago that I visited my first classroom as a reporter. I was shocked at the change from my school days. Students got up...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 22
- 3 min
'R' is for reading -- and race
K-2 teachers won't be switching to a new research-backed, phonics-based literacy curriculum this fall, reports Dana Goldstein in the New...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 12
- 1 min
Tennessee rebounds: Is it tutors?
Reading scores have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels or better in Tennessee, according to a new analysis, reports Beth Hawkins on The 74....
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 14
- 1 min
‘Proud Boys’ interrupt Pride event
Drag Queen Story Hour was starting at a Bay Area library when a group of men entered shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs, reports...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 13
- 1 min
No learning loss in Sweden
Photo: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels In Sweden, which kept schools open throughout the pandemic, first- through third-graders made normal...
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...
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 23
- 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...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 11
- 2 min
School board loses focus on academics
Shanthi Gonzales “Schools aren’t meeting students’ needs” in Oakland, California, writes Shanthi Gonzales, who’s resigning from the...
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
- Apr 25
- 2 min
School librarians: Dump ‘Mockingbird,’ ‘Gatsby’ …
— Summer Reading Survey School librarians want to drop To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn from summer reading...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 17, 2020
- 2 min
“Restructuring” Public Education
This author invites a total restructuring of K-14 education: Any restructuring effort must start with getting the funding right, which...
Joanne Jacobs
- Dec 30, 2019
- 2 min
Education Reform
Forbes has an excellent “decade retrospective” on education reform and suggests where we might look for results in the next decade: Now...
Joanne Jacobs
- Oct 11, 2018
- 2 min
Dean, you didn’t prepare me to teach reading
“Schools aren’t teaching reading in ways that line up with the science,” concludes American Public Media’s Emily Hanford in Hard Words....
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 27, 2018
- 2 min
Catching up in ‘grade 2.5’
“Like many high-poverty middle schools, Oakland’s Elmhurst Community Prep is trying to reach students who are academically all over the...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 24, 2018
- 2 min
Michigan 3rd graders must ‘read or flunk’
Justin Jennings went to Purdue with a basketball scholarship — and third-grade reading skills, he recalls. With intensive tutoring help,...
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 4, 2018
- 2 min
New teen fiction genre: School shootings
Lilia Martinez, 15, a student in Michigan “estimates that of the 28 books she read over the last school year, both for pleasure and...
Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 22, 2018
- 2 min
Digital readers crave excitment
She cites cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, author of The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads...
Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 21, 2018
- 2 min
For teens, texting crowds out books, TV
For today’s teens, “time on digital media has displaced time once spent enjoying a book or watching TV,” concludes Jean Twenge, author of...