Tag: students
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Thoughts from Elliot
I’ve written about Elliot Washor before in this column. Washor co-founded the Big Picture Company and The Met in Providence, Rhode Island. Both enterprises are considered cutting edge when it comes to thinking about learning in a different way. Most recently, he has become known for his thinking about out of school learning. Washor recently…
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40 Years Later
Recently, The 74 asked Margaret Raymond to reflect on the past 40 years of American public education, after the release of the report “A Nation at Risk.” Raymond’s conclusory essay to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution’s “A Nation at Risk + 40” research initiative spotlights insights and analysis from experts, educators and policymakers as to what…
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Why Can’t Schools Produce Strong Readers?
Why aren’t our kids better readers? Most people guess that poverty is the culprit, but as The 74’s Chad Aldeman reported last month, ”According to the latest national results, low-income fourth graders read an average of two to three grade levels below their higher-income peers.” “It’s not new that students in poverty have lower scores…
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Friday News Roundup
It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup. What Happens When a 48K-Student District Commits to the “Science of Learning” (The 74) This is a head scratcher. Why more school districts don’t commit to teaching learning science to their teachers is perplexing. One must guess school districts think that learning science is covered in a teacher’s…
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A Sign of an Ineffective System
A sign that our current K-12 system is in trouble is the fact that 1 million students who were enrolled in that system before the pandemic have disappeared. Oh, they’re still alive and kicking, but they aren’t seated in the schools they were in for the 2019-2020 school year. It’s difficult to know if those…
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A Different Way At Looking At Things
Another day. Another story about a school closure. This one comes from Vermont and was covered by Vermont Digger. This story begins: “On a cold, gray Saturday in March, about a third of all the people living in Windham [Vermont] crammed into the town’s more than 220-year-old white clapboard meetinghouse. One item in particular had…
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Playing and Learning in the Streets
Play has always been under-rated when it comes to learning, especially in this country. In the U.S., it seems like our children are either playing or learning. Surely, they can’t be doing both! The reality is that, as many countries around the world already realize, children learn deeply during play. The problem today is that…
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A Lesson From a Soccer Gambler
After a week or so, I’m back. Today, let’s discuss outcome bias and its impact on learning, especially in today’s traditional K-12 system. Outcome bias is the assumption that good results are always the consequence of good decisions and superior performance. Rasmus Ankersen, author, speaker, director of football at Southampton and president of the Turkish…
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Friday News Roundup
It’s time for the Friday News Roundup! State Officials and Educators Brace for Another Tough Budget year as the School Year Starts (Vermont Public) Vermont, like other states, continues to struggle with their school budgets. Vermont Public reports that, “Last year was a bad year for school budgets. And this year, things could be just…
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The Politics of Public Education
Has anyone noticed there is a presidential election going on? But even though the candidates have debated the economy, immigration, tariffs, and – Haitian-eating dogs, public education has been largely left on the sidelines this election season. But a recent PDK International poll suggests America has public education on its mind, even though Donald Trump…