In many partnerships that bring businesses and schools together, a private or nonprofit third party serves as a bridge to the most successful collaborations. For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) offers extracurricular STEM activities, including an international high school robotics competition, to more than 400,000 K12 students nationwide, with mostly school-based robotics […]
No matter how cutting-edge the technology or advanced the curriculum, students have a hard time mastering essays and equations if they're hungry, traumatized or feeling marginalized by a textbook's inaccurate portrayal of their ethnic group. "If you came to work and hadn't eaten for a day or two, you wouldn't be prepared to work" says […]
Winfred Roberson Jr. was unanimously voted new superintendent of economically and culturally diverse Glendale USD in California, where he will oversee 33 schools and more than 25,000 students. Roberson had been superintendent of Davis Joint USD for the past six years, a district where 69 percent of the students who took the English portion of […]
Kicking a soccer ball might feel a bit like poetry—the power of your foot sending the ball curling through the air to a teammate or into the back of a net. Washington, D.C., teacher Julie Kennedy has for the past 20 years paired verse with the world's most popular sport to provide an edifying, after-school […]
High-speed internet access increased substantially in classrooms over the past two years, a recent report says. But 21 million students, many in rural areas, remain without reliable broadband connections in the classroom, according to the "2015 State of the States" report from the nonprofit EducationSuperHighway. "We've seen a dramatic increase in the number of students […]
Libby Schaaf, mayor of Oakland, established in January the Oakland Promise, a project with more than 100 community partners working to triple the number of the city's low-income, public school students who go on to graduate college. Over the next decade, 55,000 college savings accounts (totaling $14 million) will be opened for children born into […]
Traditional parent-teacher conferences may go the way of dial-up internet as administrators experiment with innovative family engagement programs to increase student achievement, experts say. "Parents are really interested in activities and events that involve interaction with teachers," says Elena Lopez, associate director of the Harvard Family Research Project, a national platform for family and community […]
Robert C. Fisler School serves 960 K8 students in the suburban Fullerton School District in Orange County, California. Second- through eighth-grade students participate in the school's 1-to-1 laptop program, which has been in place since the school opened in August 2004. But access to technology is meaningless without the right digital programs. Elizabeth Ellison, eighth-grade […]
Efforts to address the achievement gap have taken an innovative path in Connecticut. In response to the call from legislatures disgusted with 25 years of NAEP data trends that showed little improvement in closing gaps, a task force was created to examine the disparities. Simple innovation This is where the innovative path came in. The […]
The bad news seems to be everywhere. The School District of Philadelphia had 190 teaching vacancies in October. From New York to California, enrollment in teacher-preparation programs has fallen by double-digit percentages. The president of Nevada's Board of Education called her state's teacher shortage "horrific" according to published reports, warning that, if conditions don't improve, […]
