In rural eastern Kentucky, teacher Jill Armstrong connects her high school students not just with towering historical figures, but also with real-live teens from schools on the other side of the world. Armstrong, who teaches 12th-grade world history at Greenup County High School in the Greenup County School District, partnered with the City School in […]
“Why can’t Johnny read?” It’s the question Rudolph Flesch asked in 1955 with his seminal book by that name. Unfortunately, it’s still being asked today. Mark Seidenberg has studied the behavioral, computational and neural bases of reading and language for over 30 years, and he believes he knows the answer. In his new book Language […]
Pre-K programs for students with special needs vary widely in quality and scope. Some states and districts have long included students with special needs in pre-K classes alongside their more typically developing peers.
“Lights, device, action!” This is what’s going on at New Rochelle High School, about 20 miles north of New York City, where students use smartphones and tablets to create short movies based on classic works of literature. The school’s writing and filmmaking program, which heavily employs mobile devices, works in conjunction with the English high […]
More than 10 years ago, when she was in sixth grade and her mother was incarcerated, Alisha Murdock skipped classes, fought with other students, got suspended and missed so much school she had to repeat the grade. Murdock says no one at school reached out to help, and she doesn’t want today’s students to face […]
As founder of Research for Better Teaching— an organization dedicated to improving instruction and leadership— Jon Saphier says underperforming students need to believe that “smart is something you can get.” As founder of Research for Better Teaching— an organization dedicated to improving instruction and leadership— Jon Saphier says underperforming students need to believe that “smart is something […]
High school students in the tiny Magazine School District in Arkansas receive three hours of sex education a year in grades 9 through 12—an approach that Superintendent Brett Bunch acknowledges is inadequate.
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 […]
In the latest round of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exam, given to more than 500,000 15-year-olds in 72 nations, students in the U.S. once again scored in the middle of the pack—and below average in math—raising concerns and sending educators looking for answers. The search often turns to the top of the […]
If you want to know what motivates students—and teachers and administrators, for that matter—Russell Quaglia says you have to go to the source. Quaglia has spent years collecting information about “school voice”—that is, what these three groups think about their schools. The latest incarnation of this work is the Student Voice Survey. With different versions […]
