Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday. Time for the Roundup.

Team Teaching Reduces Turnover Compared to Going Solo, New Research Finds (EducationWeek)

If you’re old enough, like I am, you’ll start to see the same news stories reappearing, trying to convince readers that the story is “new.”

Witness a recent post in EducationWeek pointing to new research suggesting that teaming teachers together “pays dividends at large for teacher retention.”

We knew teacher teams worked back in 1994, my first year as a middle school principal.

The challenge with teaming is that it makes the construction of a master schedule, or how classes are scheduled within the school setting on a daily basis, more difficult – and too many school leaders just didn’t want to take the time to insure teaming of teachers worked for adult learning leaders and their young learners.

Governor Greg Abbott Vetoes Funding for Federal Summer Lunch Program for Low-Income Children (The Texas Tribune)

It’s not Christmas time in Texas, but I know who I’m nominating to play the role of “The Grinch” in Austin next holiday season – Greg Abbott.

Citing uncertainty over federal funding as his reason for rejecting Texas’s participation, the Lone Star State won’t sponsor free lunches for poor kids this summer.

Who prevents poor kids from eating a free lunch? I know the answer – at least in Texas.

Greg Abbott.

For Students With Disabilities, Suspension Not Just a Matter of Race and Gender – But Geography (The 74)

There are certain states that send disabled kids home from school more than others.

According to The 74,

“No state removes students with disabilities from school for 10 days or fewer at a higher rate than South Carolina.”

“There, some 15% of special education students faced out-of-school suspensions for up to 10 days in the 2022-23 school year – nearly twice the national average, according to The 74’s analysis of the most recently available Individuals with Disabilities Education Act data.”

Other states with double digit averages include Michigan, Nevada, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, and the District of Columbia.

But here’s the deal. For years researchers have reported that suspending kids for disciplinary reasons just doesn’t work. Suspensions don’t improve student behavior; the only thing it does is keep kids away from school.

Schools would be better served if more time was spent figuring out how to engage these types of learners in reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development activities.

School Start Times and Student Sleep. Explained (EducationWeek)

Here’s another story that is trying to pretend to tell us something we don’t already know. EducationWeek reported this week that kids do better in school when they are allowed to sleep longer in the mornings. So, for the longest time, researchers have been encouraging districts to start school later.

But there is one force greater than sleep research and that is the yellow school bus.

School district after school district will tell you that the reason they can’t delay start times for learning benefit is because the school transportation system will be thrown off so badly that they won’t be able to deliver all the kids to school on time.

So the American Academy of Pediatrics can holler about a later start time as much as they want, but school buses continue to rule when it comes to when school starts and when it is dismissed.

More Than a Third of Homeschool Families Also Use Public Schools, New Data Shows (The 74)

America’s “public schooling” families want choice! Not just “school choice,” but more importantly “learner choice.”

The 74 reported this week that,

“More than a third of families with at least one homeschooled child also have a student enrolled in a traditional district school. Another 9% of homeschoolers have a child in a charter.”

“Angela Watson, an assistant professor and director of the university’s Homeschool Research Lab, called the finding a ‘big deal.’”

“The data is ‘evidence that there’s not this rejection of public schooling that people frame it as,’ she said. She doesn’t know whether many families were ‘mixing’ different forms of education before the pandemic. ‘To my knowledge, no one has thought to ask this question before. Folks just assumed homeschool families were homeschool families.’”

Learning happens anywhere, anytime. We see that happening everywhere.

Now we just need to figure out how to reward young learners for becoming smarter and stronger – whether it is in traditional school or elsewhere.

I’ll be away until July 7^th. Til then. Happy Fourth of July everyone. SVB