Last fall, a national problem arrived in Superintendent Richard Scaletta's corner of rural northwestern Pennsylvania. Principals in the General McLane School District began reporting unprecedented levels of misbehavior: students in frequent and severe distress, sometimes kicking, biting or throwing things.
Educators and psychologists propose a host of explanations for the apparent uptick in student anxiety. Some point to public events ÁÁ¬ terrorism, school shootings, opioid addiction, the coarsening of political discourse in the age of Trump. Others blame technology—devices that substitute electronic contact for face-to-face interaction, and social media that transform school-hours drama into a […]
The spread of learning on mobile devices has driven providers to push science platforms into the cloud. At the same time, the need for hands-on activities and real-world connections has led to the development of more advanced robot-building kits and products that allow students to experiment on microorganisms. Educators also increasingly connect STEM to other […]
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 […]
Every morning, principals in the West Bridgewater School District in Massachusetts get on the PA system to lead students through a few minutes of mindful breathing exercises.
Millard Public Schools near Omaha, Nebraska, will switch to a college-like ranking system that designates graduates as magna cum laude, summa cum laude and cum laude. This was after administrators there discovered students had been loading their school-year schedules with honors and AP classes, and taking required, unweighted courses during summer school. "We want students […]
A focus on teaching social-emotional skills—persistence, resilience, communication and other non-cognitive abilities—has led to an obvious jump in reading and math scores in Nevada's Washoe County School District. Washoe's students are now "less likely to be suspended, more likely to attend school, and they graduate at a much higher rate than students who didn't have […]
The arts survive in American education, despite pressures placed on school leaders to focus on high-stakes tests in math and English. As of March, 27 states identify the arts as a core academic subject. And 49 states and the District of Columbia have adopted elementary and secondary standards for the arts, according to the "State […]
In the name of saving money, K12 administrators are also discovering that reconfiguring grade levels offers unique education advantages. School leaders nationwide are exploring innovative group-level groupings and thinking beyond the typical K5 elementary school, grades 6 through 8 middle school and grades 9 through 12 high school model to figure out how to continue […]
