Whether and how religion should be taught in public schools is one of those perennial hot buttons in America that seems to defy consensus. So when the National Council for the Social Studies this past June released new guidelines for teaching religion in schools, it raised questions. The council’s goal, however, was not to simply […]

The race to offer a rigorous pre-college curriculum to K12 students, even in elementary school, is heating up, with the move by one of the nation’s largest districts to introduce a curriculum of international standards to its students in grade 3 through 5 this fall. Florida’s Collier County school district, with 47,000 students, will use […]

The number of young people suffering from depression has increased almost 40 percent in the last three years. And, as the Hamilton Southeastern School District has found, mental health issues are hardly limited to teens. After the city of Fishers, an Indianapolis suburb of about 90,000, had 13 suicides in 2016, city officials launched a […]

When it comes to boosting the nutritional and academic value of school meals, Janet Poppendieck certainly offers food for thought. A nationally recognized scholar and activist whose work focuses on poverty, hunger and food assistance in the United States, Poppendieck is the author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America (University of California […]

If educators in Chicago’s Noble Network of Charter Schools get their way, they will soon compose the largest unionized charter school network in the nation. The Noble charter network operates 17 schools across Chicago, employing about 800 teachers and staff. In March, Noble educators joined together to begin the unionizing process, saying it would help […]

David Krulwich, principal of the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science, says new teachers are too often left to fend for themselves, without the benefit of an artisan-apprentice relationship. Teaching is a craft and, as with any craft, neophytes should ideally work alongside the experts and artisans to soak up knowledge and experience along […]

In his previous book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, journalist Paul Tough looked at how non-cognitive personal qualities like perseverance, self-control and conscientiousness play a critical role in children’s success. Now, in the follow-up to that book, Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why (2016, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Tough […]

Every school district has that “last stop school” where the so-called “bad kids” end up. In California’s Morongo USD that school is Black Rock High School, remotely situated in the Mojave Desert. The school serves a population of students who are often struggling academically and living in households with poverty, drug use and neglect. A […]