A Special Friday News Roundup

Lately, I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend from the educational news feeds I follow daily.

Most of the K-12 educational news reported isn’t related to how we get kids smarter and stronger at all.

I was ready to report on the following news this week:

“Vermont Parents Upset Over Lack of Access to Standardized Test Scores and Data Suppression”

“Los Angeles Schools Look to Confront Dire Chronic Absenteeism Numbers”

Then I realized that these two stories have very little to do with getting kids smarter and stronger, unless you believe that showing up to school everyday is the way to improve your reading, writing, and problem-solving abilities.

Beyond the stories I started to select for ABPTL’s Friday News Roundup, I looked at the new stories appearing in today’s EducationWeek online service. Here are today’s article titles:

“Schools Turn to AI to Detect Weapons. But Some Question the Tech’s Effectiveness”

“Students Have Climate Anxiety. Here’s What Educators Need to Be Able to Help Them”

“Nation’s First Religious Charter School Denied, For Now”

“Recruiters: Prospective Teacher Hires Have Questions. Be Prepared”

“State Canceled School Club’s Queer Alliance Drag and Donuts. Here’s What Students Did Next”

You see my point?

Either I’m not looking hard enough for articles describing our nation’s struggles with teaching our kids, especially our black, brown, and poor kids, to read, write, and problem-solve, or our media is doing a crappy job covering what should be “the big story” – that our kids, especially our black, brown, and poor kids, can’t read, write, and problem-solve.

This inability to focus on the main thing isn’t special to public education. Have you noticed that, as a country, we are more than happy to participate in “activity avoidance”? That is we choose to discuss, argue, and advocate about topics that really don’t make a difference in our country’s future, and therefore avoid the major challenges facing us as a nation?

When it comes to public schooling, as well as health care, infrastructure, climate change, and other major world challenges, I suggest we stop focusing on the news stories that really don’t matter, and begin working on those critical, and difficult, problems we need to figure out if we are to remain in this country and on this earth.

Have a great weekend. SVB