Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday. Time for the Roundup.

One District’s Battle to Curb Cellphones and Get Kids to Engage in Real Life (EducationWeek)

Teachers Like Cellphone Bans – But Not for Themselves (EducationWeek)

There’s always been a double standard in schools when it comes to what is good for kids and what is good for adults. Cellphone policy is not different.

While school districts like Spokane, Washington adopt policies that keep cellphones away from young learners during instructional time, a recent EducationWeek poll reported that more than half of the 1,668 teacher respondents said they don’t need any rules to govern their cellphone use.

Spokane, along with scores of districts nationwide, banned cellphones in middle and elementary schools at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year. High schoolers must keep their phones away during class but are permitted to use them at lunch and at passing times.

The common theme among most of the social media poll responses was that teachers don’t want to be subject to the same rules as their students. Several respondents quoted their “fully developed frontal lobe” as the reason behind why they have more self-control around their phones than their students.

A “fully developed frontal lobe”? Please! How many of us have seen adults pathetically addicted to social media like Meta and Tic Toc? It’s all over the internet on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

No, in this instance, adults should probably align with kids. If kids are expected to give up their access to social media, so should their role models.

138 NYC Schools That Are Defying Expectations When it Comes to Reading (The 74)

Traditional New York City schools would be wise to pay attention to how charter schools are teaching reading.

In New York, charter schools make up 9.5% of the state reading sample, but they earned 38.5% of the spots on the state’s list of exemplars.

All serve a high concentration of low-income students, with 66% to 92% of children qualifying for free- or reduced-price lunch. And yet, 90% to 97% of their third graders were proficient readers in 2024, judged by state testing. In comparison, the proficiency rate for all third graders across the state was just 43%.

Federal Funding Cuts Come for Big Bird: What’s Ahead for PBS Kids? (EducationWeek)

“Millions of children have grown up watching PBS Kids’ educational TV, geared toward 2- to 8-year-olds – from classics like ‘Sesame Street’ and ‘Mister Rogers Neighborhood’ to recently added shows like ‘Lyla in the Loop….”

“But access to this educational content is in jeopardy due to federal funding cuts.”

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a major funder of PBS and PBS Kids announced on January 5 that it would close the 58-year-old organization after Congress approved a requests from the Trump administration and rescinded its federal funding. Also, the U.S. Department of Education in May terminated the corporation’s 2020-2025 Ready To Learn grant.”

…

“Congress is now advancing a spending bill that would revive the Ready to Learn grant program, but it’s unclear how the broader upheaval in federal support for public broadcasting will affect it long term.”

I’m guessing Big Bird’s popularity is greater than Donald Trump’s these days, so be careful when you start messing around with the yellow feathered friend.

Til Monday. Have a great weekend. SVB