Schools still feel the effects of post-recession budget cuts eight years after the economic crisis reached its zenith. A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Studies showed that 25 states in 2014 were spending less per student than before the recession, adjusted for inflation. Budget cuts in seven states exceeded 10 percent, according […]
Facing a ballooning teacher shortage in recent years, Clark County School District in Nevada launched a social media and email recruiting strategy, sending messages to self-identified school teachers over LinkedIn and reaching more than 2.5 million on Facebook. "When you have a staffing crisis, you have to come up with something different to do" says […]
New teaching techniques and learning technology top the agenda at this fall's conference of the National Council for the Social Studies. Technology is quickly becoming a popular tool in social studies classrooms as teachers find ways to make history come alive for their students, who simultaneously learn about content and improve their technology skills, says […]
"When do you do what?" The counselors at Mooresville High School of Mooresville Graded Schools near Charlotte, North Carolina, heard that question often from college-bound students during the fall application season. The college planning software the district used prior to spring 2016 helped the 1,876 Mooresville students prepare documents, but did not provide information or […]
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 […]
For centuries now, we have come to believe that there is only one way for students to learn—come to school, sit at a desk, be taught by a teacher, and be tested. We’ve operated schools as if they were industrial factories, with teaching and learning practices that mimic assembly-line and batch-processing manufacturing. But we can […]
For decades, the J. Sterling Morton High School District in the Chicago suburbs was in bad shape. It had a gang problem. Some students underperformed on state tests and were no longer accepted to their first-choice colleges. And the district faced a deficit of millions of dollars. In 2008, when Michael Kuzniewski became superintendent, he […]
High school math classes focus traditionally on solving equations. The world of mathematical modeling emphasizes creating equations. The nonprofit Association of Computational and Mathematical Modeling is developing a free mathematical modeling curriculum that it plans to share with teachers by early 2017. It will show students how to construct equations that solve complex real-world engineering, […]
