High school graduation rates have hit an all-time high. Virtual credit recovery, offered in 90 percent of U.S. public high schools, have helped fuel that increase, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Nevertheless, half a million high school students still drop out each year, and questions loom about whether some students who recover lost […]
Perhaps in an effort to right the wrongs of the past, the Department of Education has begun accepting applications for $2.3 million in grants that will teach Native American languages to a new generation of children. Starting in the 1870s, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs ran boarding schools for Native American children that separated […]
Schools fail to adequately teach the history of American slavery, partly because teachers lack the preparation to cover it, according to a recent study from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Also, students have little basic knowledge about the role slavery played in shaping the nation: Only 8 percent of high school seniors surveyed could identify […]
California students in fall 2018 will be the first in the U.S. to use textbooks that highlight the historical contributions made by people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. The new curricular materials come after the state’s passage of the FAIR Education Act in 2011, which requires that history instruction cover LGBT people as […]
Finding innovative ways to make math matter to students is key to improving competency in all grades. At Ridgewood Community High School outside Chicago, students are building a home on campus. The project, part of a Geometry and Construction class, reflects administrators’ efforts to make math relevant through real-world applications. “Our thought was, ‘It’s not […]
The new Fordham Institute report, Is There a Gifted Gap?, gave me a lot of food for thought this week. Let’s start with some important positives: Although gifted education research is in many ways thriving, attention to policy research has been woefully underdeveloped, and this study is a major contribution to filling that void. I’ve also […]
Schools and districts in nearly 30 states—including Lyon County School District (Nevada)—use the Edthena platform to video coach educators. Lyon County began video coaching its 200 elementary school teachers in the 2017-18 school year. The PD was made possible by a grant from the Nevada Department of Education. The Virginia Department of Education has approved […]
A lack of PD for teachers and principals hinders schools from achieving the full benefits of personalized learning, according to an analysis by MAPLE, the Massachusetts Personalized Learning Edtech Consortium. Tech industry leaders Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have invested millions of dollars in personalized learning and the requisite technology. However, traditional classroom practices still […]
The Virginia Department of Education has added Renaissance’s Star Reading, Math and Early Literacy to its Student Growth Assessments list to help teachers lead students toward mastering Virginia’s Standards of Learning in reading and math. Raytown Quality Schools (Missouri) has chosen itslearning’s new LMS to support student data privacy. Fifteen states, including California and West […]
Serious concerns—such as student anxiety, lunch shaming and immigration policy—shared 2017’s education headlines with the whirling whimsy of fidget spinners. But what lasting impact will these developments have? And how will administrators and policymakers handle issues that stretch into 2018 and beyond? A look back at the year’s top stories sheds some light on the […]
