Five years ago, Windsor Locks Public Schools in northern Connecticut was designated an Alliance District, meaning it was one of the 30 lowest-performing academic districts in the state and needed help. The good news was that the designation came with funding to improve instruction, inspiring district leadership to go in a new direction—doing away with […]
Across the country, thousands of school districts are building and publicizing summer meal programs, components of a 48-year-old, federally funded effort to keep low-income children from suffering the health and cognitive effects of summer hunger. Wichita Public Schools worked hard last summer to sell children on free food. Those attending the first week of the […]
KANSAS CITY, Kansas—Superintendent Cynthia Lane learned the cello a few years ago, but not to fulfill some lifelong dream of soloing with the local symphony. The leader of Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools, who played clarinet in high school, now performs alongside fourth- and fifth-graders in their annual spring strings concert. Fifth-graders also spend months […]
A federal judge ruled last spring that the predominantly white city of Gardendale, Alabama, may secede from its more diverse county school district—even though the judge saw racial motivations behind the city’s efforts. Jefferson County, Alabama, has been struggling to comply with a federal desegregation order since 1971. Gardendale students have been attending the Jefferson […]
Longtime Superintendent Bill Harrison started recruiting teachers from abroad in 1997 in the face of a shortage in North Carolina. “We thought international teachers would not only fill a slot but add a cultural component” Harrison says. The then-superintendent of Cumberland County Schools contracted with a company called Visiting International Faculty. Twenty years later, Harrison […]
About 13,000 overseas-trained teachers worked in the U.S. on H-1B and J-1 visas in 2012, down from a peak of nearly 20,000 in 2009, according to a report from Education International, a federation of worldwide teachers unions. While the Trump Administration considers limiting the H-1B program, educators make up a small percentage of workers coming […]
Ten weeks before summer break each year, Jason Borrie makes a dramatic announcement to his social studies class at Northeastern Clinton Central, a high school in Northeastern Clinton CSD in upstate New York. An uncle of theirs has passed away, leaving each student $25,000 with one condition: they invest their inheritances in the stock market. […]
In four Utica Community elementary schools in metro Detroit, students as young as 10 manipulate and pull apart the organs of the body, build roller coasters, and design and test 3D prototypes. The students wear 3D glasses on their heads; in their hands, they hold specialized styluses to maneuver digital objects projected in space in […]
Making the transformation from traditional to online assessments can cause confusion for many districts, even when it comes to basic definitions. In Houston ISD, for example, analysts found that school leaders were using the right terminology, but their understanding of the words differed widely. Some thought an online assessment was about downloading a scoring sheet, […]
Across the country, youngsters in all grades are connecting with senior citizens on projects that transcend community outreach to provide students with true curricular value. While doing research for National History Day, students in Tea McCaulla’s Florida high school stumbled upon Women’s Airforce Service Pilots and Letters from Home, a book by World War II […]
