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Thinking and Linking

Whites vs. Asians in college admissions

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 14, 2017
2 min

Whites vs. Asians in college admissions

Preferences for the children of wealthy donors — mostly white — are keeping high-scoring Asian-Americans out of elite private colleges, argues Daniel Golden on Bloomberg View. Affirmative action for Latinos and blacks is a less significant factor, he argues. Who gets into Harvard? The Justice Department is investigating a discrimination complaint against Harvard by Asian-American groups. Reportedly, Asian-American applicants must have much higher SAT scores — 140 points highe

‘Civil rights’ roll back? Or common sense?

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 21, 2017
2 min

‘Civil rights’ roll back? Or common sense?

The Trump administration is rolling back civil rights efforts, according to ProPublica. A leaked memo reveals that the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) plans to change the Obama-era policy on investigating complaints. Charges of sexual assault and harassment will be the most affected by OCR’s new policy, writes R. Shep Melnick, a Boston College professor and author of the forthcoming book, The Transformation of Title IX. What’s being rolled back, he writ

P-TECH grows, but is it working?

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 16, 2017
2 min

P-TECH grows, but is it working?

IBM is scaling up the wildly popular P-TECH model,reports Jenny Abamu on EdSurge. But the original Brooklyn school is struggling to raise completion rates. Pathways in Technology Early College High School (more commonly known as P-TECH) in Crown Heights, Brooklyn opened its doors in 2011. The public high school’s claim to fame was its unique model serving grades 9 to 14, offering students associate’s degrees in STEM majors by the time they graduate. Backed by companies like I

Trump cuts failed education programs

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 12, 2017
2 min

Trump cuts failed education programs

President Trump’s proposed education budget — called “devastating,” a “wrecking ball” and an “assault on the American Dream” — primarily cuts funding for ineffective programs, argue Williamson M. Evers, a former U.S. assistant secretary of education for planning, evaluation and policy development, and Vicki E. Alger, a research fellow at the Independent Institute. Trump wants to reduce the U.S. Department of Education’s discretionary budget by $9.2 billion, from $68.3 billion

Trump backs choice, but what’s the plan?

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 5, 2017
1 min

Trump backs choice, but what’s the plan?

President Trump wants to spend $20 billion on school choice for “disadvantaged youth.” Families “should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them,” he said in his speech to Congress. Last week, Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited an Catholic school in Orlando, where most of the students, who are predominantly black and low-income, use Florida’s tax-credit scholarships to pay tuition. According to Pol

Trump: Black colleges are a priority

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 28, 2017
1 min

Trump: Black colleges are a priority

President Trump met with black college leaders yesterday. Today, he signed an executive order pledging support and moving the Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities from the Department of Education into the executive office of the White House. The order “directs the initiative to work with the private sector to strengthen the fiscal stability of HBCUS, make infrastructure improvements, provide job opportunities for students, work with secondary schools to

Trump drops transgender bathroom rule

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 23, 2017
1 min

Trump drops transgender bathroom rule

President Trump has rescinded a federal guideline requiring schools to let transgender students use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity. Trump overruled Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, reports the New York Times. Enforcement of the Obama administration guideline has been blocked by a nationwide injunction. It’s up to states and local school districts to set bathroom policy, a joint letter from the Justice and Education departments said. DeVos issued a statemen

Trump-twitting homework is __________

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 20, 2017
1 min

Trump-twitting homework is __________

A Staten Island middle-school teacher is under fire for an anti-Trump fill-in-the-blank question on vocabulary homework, reports the New York Post. Annadale dad Vincent Ungro complained of political bias after his 11-year-old daughter asked for homework help. One question read: “President Trump speaks in a very superior and _________ manner insulting many people. He needs to be more __________ so that the American people respect and admire him.” The next question was: “Barac

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 27, 2017
1 min

Teacher posts ‘shooting’ Trump video

“A high school art teacher in Dallas posted an Instagram video of herself ‘shooting’ an image of Donald Trump with a squirt gun and screaming ‘die’ during Friday’s inauguration,” reports Town Hall. It apparently was shot in her classroom, though it’s not clear if students were present. The posting included: “Watching the #inauguration in my classroom like…#no #stop #denial #squirtgun #hypocrisy #powerless #saveusall #teachthembetter #atleastitsfriday.” The teacher has been pl

DeVos, Darth and DeVil

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 24, 2017
2 min

DeVos, Darth and DeVil

News coverage about Betsy DeVos has been lousy, writes Alexander Russo in The Grade, now on the Kappan site. Instead of giving readers a full, helpful understanding of the nominee and her background, national outlets including Politico, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, and (especially) the New York Times have cherry-picked storylines that put DeVos in a negative light and written about DeVos’s ideas and efforts using fraught, charged language. DeVos has been depicted as “Darth

Trump’s inauguration: Safe for kids?

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 19, 2017
2 min

Trump’s inauguration: Safe for kids?

“Every peaceful transition of power is a historic moment,” a fourth-grade teacher in Michigan told parents in an email. Brett Meteyer will let students watch the inauguration, but not Donald Trump’s inaugural speech. He fears “inflammatory and degrading comments about minorities, women, and the disabled” and “profanity.” As it turned out, the speech was G rated with a “we the people” theme. President Trump criticized an “education system flush with cash but which leaves our

Teachers protest discipline reform

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 16, 2017
1 min

Teachers protest discipline reform

Under pressure to reduce racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions, schools are turning to “restorative justice” programs that encourage offenders to discuss their actions and make amends. Earlier this year, Indianapolis and New York City teachers complained about poorly implemented “restorative justice” programs, reported Emmanuel Felton in Ed Week. Now, teachers in Fresno and Des Moines are saying new discipline policies are making it harder to teach. “As Fresno Unif

Who is Betsy DeVos? What will she do?

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 9, 2017
2 min

Who is Betsy DeVos? What will she do?

On the eve of confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s nominee for Education secretary, American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten blasted Betsy DeVos as “the most anti-public education nominee” ever. Betsy DeVos DeVos is a “fairly traditional, center-right education reformer,” not a radical, argues Michael Q. McShane in Education Next. She “has a long history of supporting the kinds of accountability and school-choice policies that a broad swath of the education-

DeVos: Mainstream or monster?

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 4, 2017
1 min

DeVos: Mainstream or monster?

Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee for Education secretary, is a “pretty mainstream pick – though usual suspects on right & left of course are already going bonkers,” tweeted Andrew Rotherham. On Eduwonk, he added that DeVos is “within the mainstream of Republican thought on education.” She’s not the elitist, racist, fundamentalist, public education-hating monster that opponents claim, writes Tyler O’Neill in PJ Media. She doesn’t hate public education or oppose all regulati

NYT gets it wrong on economists and vouchers

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 2, 2017
1 min

NYT gets it wrong on economists and vouchers

Free Market For Education: Economists Generally Don’t Buy It, claims Susan Dynarski, a University of Michigan education professor, in the Dec. 30 New York Times. “Only a third of economists on the (University of) Chicago panel agreed that students would be better off if they all had access to vouchers to use at any private (or public) school of their choice,” she writes. “While economists are trained about the value of free markets, they are also trained to spot when markets

Include working-class whites in ed reform

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 1, 2017
1 min

Include working-class whites in ed reform

By framing education as the “civil rights issue of our time” and focusing on the racial achievement gap, reformers “tacitly made education reform a race-based endeavor,” Robert Pondiscio wrote last year. There’s been much praise for inner-city charters for black and Hispanic students, little attention to small-town schools that educate (or fail to educate) white working-class kids. Pondiscio didn’t think Trump would win. But he saw the people who might be drawn to Trump. Ther

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