schoolinfosystem.org
Scott Girard: Madison Teachers Inc. president Michael Jones said earlier Tuesday the union was working with the district on staffing the program. “The discussions for planning have been positive and we’re hopeful that we’ll have a model that’ll meet the needs of our kids, staff, and families,” Jones wrote to the Cap Times. The district […]
Joanne Jacobs: Parents fear their children will be told they are oppressors or victims because of the color of their skin. Banning ideas or ideologies is a bad idea, argue Robert Pondiscio and Tracey Schirra of the American Enterprise Institute. They suggest a “teacher code of conduct” on how to discuss multiple sides of controversial topics. After […]
Mike Antonucci: Here are a few of the more pungent quotes from Myart-Cruz: “There is no such thing as learning loss. Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a […]
Chris Rickert: Enrollment has dropped by about 75 students at a prominent Madison Catholic church’s school amid questions about the new principal’s connections to a controversial Cross Plains priest and whether the school would require masks to guard against a resurgent COVID-19 pandemic. The dust-up is the latest source of tension in Dane County’s Catholic […]
Chia C. Wang, Kimberly A. Prather,, Josué Sznitman, Jose L. Jimenez, Seema S. Lakdawala, Zeynep Tufekci, Linsey C. Marr: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted controversies and unknowns about how respiratory pathogens spread between hosts. Traditionally, it was thought that respiratory pathogens spread between people through large droplets produced in coughs and through contact with contaminated […]
Harvard school Of Education Why is this research being conducted? This study examines the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19; also called SARS-CoV-2) pandemic on literacy environment in the home. We are looking for parents with children under the age of 11 to complete this one-time questionnaire. We expect about 750 adults to participate in […]
Freddie deBoer: Do school expenditures determine student performance? Are our educational gaps resource gaps? I would have thought that I could confidently answer with a no and not be challenged, at this point. People have regressed spending by countries, states, and districts on outcome metrics for a long time, and they pretty much universally show […]
John McWhorter: And a crude performance at that. The students essentially demanded that an irrational, prescientific kind of fear — that a person can be meaningfully injured by the dead — be accepted as insight. They imply that the rock’s denotation of racism is akin to a Confederate statue’s denotation of the same, neglecting the […]
Michael Shellenberger: Rather than address racial disparities the governor’s appointees are lowering educational standards for all children. Most nations, including developing ones like Zimbabwe, require students to have three or more years of algebra, and require students seeking science and technology careers to have five. But the governor’s appointees on the State Board of Education’s […]
Emily Files Hamilton Superintendent Paul Mielke believes his district is following CDC recommendations. “It still came across as a ‘recommend’ and we are strongly recommending [masks,]” Mielke says. “So we’re actually matching their language. If they would have said schools should mandate, we would have looked at that.” Still, Mielke says the masking decision was […]
Contrast the experience of schoolchildren in the Netherlands—no mask mandates or distancing for kids <12, ever—to the widespread US belief that we absolutely must mask kindergartners all day in school for their safety. You owe it to yourself to read the entire thing, I promise. pic.twitter.com/QrLaJSRph5 — Genève Campbell (@bergerbell) August 23, 2021 Related: Catholic schools will sue […]
Steven Potter: A new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found huge increases in student enrollment in virtual charter and homeschooling last year. We discuss what that means for students, parents and school districts. Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly […]
NY Times: An analysis by N.W.E.A., a nonprofit that provides academic assessments, for example, found that Latino third graders scored 17 percentile points lower in math in the spring of 2021, compared to the typical achievements of Latino third graders in the spring of 2019. The decline was 15 percentile points for Black students and […]
Lucy McBride: A recent peer-reviewed study in Britain of nearly 260,000 children (1,700 of whom showed symptoms) reminds us that for most kids, a coronavirus infection will manifest as the common cold—if anything. Also reassuring is that only 4.4 percent of children diagnosed with COVID-19 in this study had symptoms after 28 days (and 1.8 percent after […]
How naïve is the lay American to believe that illiteracy is not intentional in govt schools—it’s why most politicians privately school and restrict constituent choice—literate people are “unmanageable and of no value to their master”—politicians lose control when voters can read. pic.twitter.com/9gG8ePRbsv — Marilyn Muller (@1in5advocacy) August 20, 2021 2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks […]
David Zweig: Many of America’s peer nations around the world — including the U.K., Ireland, all of Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy — have exempted kids, with varying age cutoffs, from wearing masks in classrooms. Conspicuously, there’s no evidence of more outbreaks in schools in those countries relative to schools in the U.S., […]
Jason Bedrock and Ed Tarnowski: With 18 states enacting seven new educational choice programs and expanding 21 existing ones, 2021 has rightly been declared a “breakthrough year” for school choice. In the wake of all this progress, the one question we at EdChoice are most frequently asked is: how many students are newly eligible to […]
Kerrington Powell and Vinay Prasad: Later in 2020, Fauci participated in a second noble lie. In December, he explained in a phone interview with then–New York Times reporter Donald McNeil that he had been moving the target estimate for herd immunity based in part on emerging studies. But he also said: When polls said only about half of all […]
Noah Diekemper and Will Flanders: A new poll of likely Democratic Primary voters in Milwaukee County provides an interesting window into the divides over school choice and the Democratic coalition. The poll, commissioned by Milwaukee Works, a 501c4 organization with a focus on good governance in Milwaukee, asked respondents about a variety of issues, but school choice […]
NEW today from @WisPolicyForum: in light of Wisconsin SB 119, recently vetoed by Gov. Evers, we looked at what was happening with police spending and staffing levels prior to the pandemic. We found that even in good economic times, hundreds of WI PDs were lowering their budgets pic.twitter.com/MHH03tmVbD — Ari Brown (@AriB83) August 18, 2021
NEW: WILL Asks Wisconsin Supreme Court to Strike Down Dane County Universal Mask Order Details –> https://t.co/UGHrlAQkGf Filing –> https://t.co/tT89x5yaug pic.twitter.com/WFi6DMfsfJ — WILL (@WILawLiberty) August 18, 2021 Milwaukee County COVID Data Dane County (Madison) COVID Data “However, Evers cannot issue a statewide mask mandate without legislative approval, following a 4-3 state Supreme Court ruling issued […]
Dylan Brogan: The Madison school district has repeatedly refused to release a report detailing its own investigation into whether district policies were followed during a field trip to Minneapolis in December 2019, when hidden cameras were found in the hotel bathrooms of students. Those events would lead a month later to the arrest of East […]
Ann Althouse quotes: “Of course, I blame President Biden for the disastrous retrograde operation still unfolding. But let us not allow that to deflect us from heaping even more blame on military leaders.” Britanica: Accountability, principle according to which a person or institution is responsible for a set of duties and can be required to […]
Shannon Whitworth: My problems with the letter are legion, particularly as an African American man myself. The one that stands out for me is that this does absolutely nothing to advance the causes of people of color. In fact, it would diminish the credibility of any movement on top of creating resentment and division by […]
Common Sense Wisconsin: Among the policies the POWER paper recommends: Promoting the existing open enrollment process to inform parents of their options Providing curriculum transparency so parents can enroll or transfer with full understanding of what’s being taught Eliminating the per-pupil funding disparities between choice, charter and brick and mortar students Expanding school choice to […]
“What we saw Wednesday was…nothing new— the maintenance of white supremacy just has new packaging.” Thanks @ToneMSN for letting my write about the audacity that was last week’s committee hearings on Critical Race Theory. https://t.co/jsg0M9LOcg — Nada Elmikashfi (@nadaelmikashfi) August 16, 2021 2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous […]
Bill Dupor: Although the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Recovery Act) provided nearly $28 billion to state governments for improving U.S. highways, the highway system saw no significant improvement. For example, relative to the years before the act, the number of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges was nearly unchanged, the number […]
Frederick Hess: Despite these numbers, some on the left have decided that the answer is not to insist that schools use the $190 billion in emergency federal COVID school aid to help students catch up and even excel, but to launch a nihilistic crusade in service to a warped mantra of “equity.” This is the same notion […]
National Council on teacher quality: The quality of the teacher workforce is especially important in the early grades, when teachers bear an extraordinary responsibility, building a solid foundation for students in both the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed in later grades, as well as in their future lives. The past year and […]
Deanna Fisher: Smith’s comments above are bang on the mark. Too many American parents, having taken the time and effort to move into a “good” school district, or after making sure that their child got into the “good” school or “good” program, felt that their work was done. How very, very wrong they were, and […]
Alyssa Lyons: According to Wisconsin’s Policy Forum, virtual charter enrollment rose 84% in 2020-21. Here in Eau Claire that trend holds true. Last year, while offering virtual school in addition to the district’s online COVID-19 cohort, the Eau Claire Virtual School had 40 students enrolled in grades four through 12. This year, now offering K-12, that number has […]
Rick Eisenberg: These things — not “talking about race” or teaching American history in full — are why Americans object to CRT. Proposals to limit curriculum or teaching derived from CRT differ and are of varying merit, but the best of them seek to prohibit schools from advocating for or requiring students to assent to a […]
Jon Miltimore: Weeks later, however, we have an abundance of empirical evidence that show the prognosticators were once again wrong. Cases did not double or quadruple as Ferguson had predicted. Nor did cases “surge,” as many had warned. On the contrary, cases fell—a lot. Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and […]
Chris Papst: “My son is really in desperate need of tutoring in math,” Gray told Project Baltimore. “And, how did my son pass if he didn’t know none of this math?” Now, Project Baltimore has obtained student assessment scores from just one class, in one high school, that show how widespread the problem appears to […]
Dan Lennington: How can parents defend their right to know what is being taught in schools? Help is on the way. Working with Wisconsin legislators, WILL has developed a Classroom Transparency Act. If adopted, this law will require school districts to post instruction materials online for parents and taxpayers. This requirement would go beyond the […]
Hillary Borrud: For the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level. Gov. Kate Brown had demurred earlier this summer regarding whether she supported the plan passed by the Legislature to drop the requirement […]
Rasmussen: Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters nationwide believe increased government spending leads to inflation. A Scott Rasmussen survey found that only 14% disagree and 27% are not sure. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Republicans see a connection between spending and inflation. Democrats, by a 45% to 21% margin, tend to agree. Among Independent voters, 45% believe […]
Wisconsin Policy Forum: Yet some schooling options did see sizable enrollment increases during the pandemic, DPI data show. Homeschool enrollment increased by 47% in the 2020-21 school year, following several previous years of much more modest increases (see Figure 2). This enrollment increase was the largest since at least 1984, the earliest year for which […]
Elizabeth Beyer: The state’s $0 increase in each district’s per-pupil spending limit coupled with the district’s unprecedented 3.7% drop in enrollment during the 2020-21 school year could have a long-term negative effect on Madison’s budget, MacPherson said. A district’s enrollment affects how much money it receives in state aid. Madison could have lost more state […]
William Jacobson: I expect that news cycle will continue because Solas was just sued by the Rhode Island branches of the largest teachers union in the country, the National Education Association, trying to prevent South Kingstown from providing Solas with information she has requsted, including communcations involving the union or its members. You can read […]
Tyler Cowen: This “head in the sand” approach is highly imperfect. Still, it is preferable to panicking and closing the schools every year. It is difficult to calculate how many children have died of Covid, but perhaps the best estimate comes from England, where it caused 25 deaths of people younger than 18 in the […]
Daniel Levi: In a 5-minute YouTube video, BILD editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt said:“Millions of children in this country, for whom we are all responsible as a society, I would like to say what our Federal Government and our Chancellor have not dare to say so far: We ask your forgiveness. We ask your forgiveness for a […]
Rick Eisenberg & Will Flanders However, the left is still working to say otherwise, so two prevalent myths deserve to be dispelled. The passage of Act 10 and “right-to-work” legislation — which gave employees in Wisconsin the same freedom to choose whether to be in the union as is enjoyed in 26 other states — did not increase income […]
Scott Girard: “Simply put, these are not your children,” the letter states. “They are ours and they too, are Americans with rights. They are our responsibility and our most beloved. They are not yours.” A media contact for the group connected the Cap Times with a member of the Dane County chapter via email. After […]
Free exchange We talk to a Milwaukee native who helped lead school reform in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now back home, Colleston Morgan Jr. tells us whether Milwaukee can follow the same path in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading […]
Alan Borsuk: So why does the education system — especially Milwaukee Public Schools — treat them the way it does? Each of these schools has a long and discouraging history of getting hassled (or worse) by the system. You want to know what’s wrong with Milwaukee’s overall response to its education crisis? Start with looking […]
Andy Kessler: It is hard to sit by and watch your economy being strangled. Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist” is all the rage now, but the Biden administration and its progressive hangers-on are providing a master class on “How to Be an Anticapitalist” and suck the air out of the economy. […]
McKinsey: Our analysis shows that the impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year.” Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. […]
Right now, K-12 ed in WI benefits from: – A $17.9 bil budget this biennium (that’s 17% more than last budget) – $2.6 bil in federal COVID-19 aid (included in the $17.9 bil) – A $5.1 bil increase in their budget since 2013 pic.twitter.com/fHnHuQRLg1 — MacIver Institute (@MacIverWisc) July 27, 2021 2017: West High Reading […]
Virat Agrawal: As a way of slowing COVID-19 transmission, many countries and U.S. states implemented shelter-in-place (SIP) policies. However, the effects of SIP policies on public health are a priori ambiguous as they might have unintended adverse effects on health. The effect of SIP policies on COVID-19 transmission and physical mobility is mixed. To understand […]
Daniel Henninger: For all the elevation American progressivism has received recently— Joe Biden’s leftward flop, the descent of America’s institutional elites into facile wokeism—I am beginning to think the most alert minds on the political left know that what looked like their historical moment is losing momentum. The Democrats’ determination, driven by party progressives, to […]
Katie Lobosco: A small provision tucked into a massive federal budget proposal put forth by the House Appropriations Committee would cut money for charter schools by $40 million and could potentially limit many charter schools from receiving federal funds altogether. The National Alliance for Public Charters Schools is calling the cut “particularly egregious” and said […]
Elizabeth Beyer: The DeForest, Middleton-Cross Plains, Monona Grove, Mount Horeb, Stoughton, Verona and Wisconsin Heights school districts have not yet made a decision regarding mask requirements in school buildings for the 2021-22 school year. Most of the Dane County districts that responded to requests for comment said they plan to finalize safety plans in August. […]
Joanne Jacobs: California’s new Mathematics Curriculum Framework has become a political hot potato, reports Lawrence Richard on Yahoo News. The state education board will postpone a decision on implementation for 10 months in response to critics who charged it would “de-mathematize math” and prevent high achievers from taking advanced classes. 2007 Math Forum Connected Math Discovery […]
Joanne Jacobs: Only 45 percent of would-be elementary teachers pass state licensing tests on the first try in states with strong testing systems concludes a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Twenty-two percent of those who fail — 30 percent of test takers of color — never try again, reports Driven by […]
Joe Hong: Some school officials are flouting the updated state rules, saying students will be allowed to return to the classroom with or without a mask. California’s smallest school districts say they will refuse to send kids home for not wearing a mask despite a new state mandate. Superintendents in these tight-knit and typically more […]
Chris Rickert: East was largely shut down to in-person learning during Kearney’s tenure as principal. Madison high schools were the last in Dane County to welcome back students amid the COVID-19 pandemic when they began reopening to two half-days per student in late April. Kearney dealt with most of the fallout from two high-profile incidents […]
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty: The Problem: Current school funding is a complex combination of state, local and federal aid. Funding in districts is largely based on antiquated revenue limits that have cemented in place funding gaps for 25 years. Students are worth more, or less, depending on where they happen to live, or whether […]
Independent Institute: California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way. Its proposed Mathematics Curriculum Framework is presented as a step toward social justice and racial equity, but its effect would be the opposite—to rob all Californians, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, who always suffer most when schools fail to teach […]
Heather Knight: Siva Raj often receives gifts of thanks when he’s at farmers’ markets collecting signatures to qualify a recall effort of three San Francisco school board members for the ballot. Coffee, doughnuts, cookies, strawberries. “Everything!” he said with a laugh. But a new memo from a top Bay Area pollster outlining very grim unfavorable […]
Tim Odegard As a result, a push to transform reading instruction is underway in classrooms across the nation. A transformation motivated by an honest acknowledgment of reality – most children in the United States struggle to read. These struggles are not the exception reserved for the minority of kids with a disability – such as […]
Fordham Institute: Is America a racist country? Or the greatest nation on earth? Or both or neither or some of each?For the sake of our children’s education (and for any number of other reasons), we need a more thoughtful and balanced starting point for the whole conversation—one that leaves space for nuance, mutual understanding, and […]
Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, most families in {city name} will receive monthly#ChildTaxCredit payments. It’s a guaranteed income through December. I joined@mayorsforagi because all Americans deserve an income floor. This is a step in that direction. — Mayor of Madison (@MayorOfMadison) July 17, 2021 Via Ann Althouse Commentary here. 2017: West High Reading Interventionist […]
Chris Papst: Project Baltimore obtained a chart assembled by Baltimore City Schools. The chart shows the average GPA for every high school grade in the city – freshman through senior. In the first three quarters of this past school year, according to the chart, 41% of all Baltimore City high school students, earned below a […]
Alexandra Olins: On March 11, 2020, a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) was the first large school district in the country to close. First, we were told there would be no school during the closure because the district couldn’t distribute laptops to everyone — despite […]
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty: Dear School Boards, Administrators, and Concerned Parents of Wisconsin: It has come to our attention that, in the guise of providing (unsolicited) advice, the Wisconsin chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has sent a letter to district administrators purporting to tell them what the law “requires” that they […]
Scott Girard: The School Board approved $840,000 in the 2021-22 budget to fund MPA, covering teacher and administrator costs for one year of the program. Many school districts in Wisconsin and around the country are considering virtual options, an acknowledgement that some parents and families preferred online learning. Online learning has been around for decades. 2017: West […]
The Economist: TEN YEARS ago Peter Turchin, a scientist at the University of Connecticut, made a startling prediction in Nature. “The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe,” he asserted, pointing in part to the “overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees”. The subsequent […]
David Wallace-Wells This is true for the much-worried-over Delta variant. It is also true for all the other variants, and for the original strain. Most remarkably, it has been known to be true since the very earliest days of the pandemic — indeed it was among the very first things we did know about the […]
Recent polls suggest that as many as one quarter of parents plan to keep their children home for remote learning this fall. But the past 18 months suggest that most children would fair very poorly with another year of remote learning. 🧵 — David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) July 12, 2021 2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks […]
Don Surber: The parents of 1 in 9 students believe public schools are so terrible that they would rather keep the kids home and teach them themselves. Well, it is just the white kids, right? They don’t matter because whites will soon be a minority. Black and Hispanic kids will easily displace them in unionized […]
Rasmussen Reports: At a time when many schools are embroiled in controversy over the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT), voters still think it is important that kids learn traditional values in school. A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 78% of Likely U.S. Voters say it’s at least somewhat […]
William Jacobson: On Friday, July 9, 2021, at 3 p.m., U.S. District Court Judge William Young is scheduled to hold a hearing on whether the Boston School Committee improperly concealed anti-white and anti-asian text messages and thereby deceived Judge Young into finding that the “Zip Code Quota Plan” had no racist intent. We covered the […]
Scott Girard: The report also pointed to the difficulty in accessing course materials via open records requests, citing expensive costs from certain districts to receive requested materials, including more than $5,000 from the Madison Metropolitan School District and more than $1,000 from the Kenosha Unified School District. The proposed bill would require districts to post […]
Bruce Murphy: The study also found a significant racial difference in the percent of students getting full-time, in-person instruction: nationally an average of 75% of non-Hispanic white students were getting in-person instruction as of April versus 63% of Black students and 59% of Hispanic students. In 43 states, access to in-person learning was higher for […]
Scott Girard: “There is this saying that MMSD has kind of always wanted to do it the MMSD way, whatever that means,” Nichols said. “Sometimes, you’re trying to find a balance of the things that are important to our Madison school district and our educators and at the same time wanting to push sometimes in […]
George Zacharopoulos, Francesco Sella & Roi Cohen Kadosh: Formal education has a long-term impact on an individual’s life. However, our knowledge of the effect of a specific lack of education, such as in mathematics, is currently poor but is highly relevant given the extant differences between countries in their educational curricula and the differences in […]
Scott Girard: The committee that will make recommendations on renaming James Madison Memorial High School already has its hands full as its first meeting approaches. The Citizens’ Naming Committee will convene virtually at 5 p.m. Wednesday to begin the next step in the renaming process, 10 months after the School Board received a proposal from a Memorial graduate to […]
Madison: Have you been driven nuts by this right-wing college town blogger? https://t.co/dfjyU9p1TM — Jason Joyce (@jjoyce) July 5, 2021 .@wortnews obtained David Blaska's application under an open records request for all applications to the Madison police civilian oversight board. In it, he writes "Blaming police for crime has to be the ultimate galactic joke." […]
Wall Street Journal: It’s been a banner year for school choice in the states, and legislatures aren’t finished expanding scholarship and education savings account programs (ESAs). In four state budgets that passed in the last two weeks, lawmakers included provisions that give families more educational opportunities. In New Hampshire last week, Republican lawmakers approved Education […]
Sahar Nazir: // John Lewis to offer basic literacy and numeracy classes to young staff // Dame Sharon White said young staff members have been “completely failed” by the education system John Lewis Partnership chair Sharon White has said the company will provide basic literacy and numeracy classes to young staff because they have been […]
WILL: The News: The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously declared that an order from the City of Racine’s public health officer closing all schools, public and private, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is invalid and lacked proper legal authority. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) filed an original action to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on November 19, on […]
Richard Vedder: The estimable National Student Clearinghouse recently released data on spring 2021 enrollments. The press accounts stressed continuing decline; total numbers were down 3.5% from spring 2020 to spring 2021. By exploring the NSC website in greater detail, I learned that since spring 2011, total enrollment has fallen over 14 percent. In 2011, there […]
Chris Mertes: Sun Prairie School Board members who questioned district administrative team decisions to end “high stakes summative” semester and final exams on Monday, June 21 were cautioned to remember board governance procedures and reminded it was not an area over which the board could take action. The questioning of administrators began during the board’s […]
Rowan Jacobsen: In 2013, the American virologist Ralph Baric approached Zhengli Shi at a meeting. Baric was a top expert in coronaviruses, with hundreds of papers to his credit, and Shi, along with her team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, had been discovering them by the fistful in bat caves. In one sample of […]
Elizabeth Beyer: e Madison School Board voted unanimously Monday night to adopt the district’s $529.8 million preliminary budget, a 7% increase over the previous year, amid state funding uncertainty… The Madison School District is scheduled to receive $70.6 million over the course of the three payment installments. The district’s first installment, ESSER I, was approximately […]
Lant Pritchett in conversation with Ann Bernstein: Ann Bernstein: Let’s move to education now. You’ve made a controversial statement, which forms part of the title of your book, that ‘schooling ain’t learning’. And more recently, you’ve followed that up with ‘spending ain’t investment’. What do you mean by these phrases and why are they so […]
Catherine Evans: NHS prescriptions for gardening and dancing are “vitally needed” to help tackle rising levels of loneliness after lockdown, people suffering from isolation have said.Social prescribing has been included in the Welsh government’s list of priorities for the next five years. A Mind Cymru pilot project is looking into its impact on mental health. […]
Beth Schwartzapfel AND Tony Plohetski: When Taylor sued the officers who put him in those cells and ignored his cries for help, federal judges agreed that the conditions were unconstitutional — but they threw out his lawsuit, citing qualified immunity. The issue has come up again and again as the country grapples with what accountability […]
Sarah Pruitt: But for social and educational reformers, it wasn’t enough that children attend school—they also needed to stay safe and healthy when they got there. Schools were renovated and reorganized to allow better ventilation in classrooms and ensure access to fresh drinking water. Beginning in the 1890s, many cities launched medical inspection programs, with […]
Alec Johnson: Citing an abdication of duties since March 2020, a group of parents filed paperwork June 21 seeking to recall four of the seven Mequon-Thiensville School Board members. A news release from the group said the group wants to recall board members Wendy Francour, Erik Hollander, Akram Khan and Chris Schultz. The group has 60 days to […]
Jill Tucker: After her son fell behind during distance learning, and his school appeared to have no specific plan to address learning loss in the fall, she and her husband decided to make the move to private school. Laguana’s high-profile departure from the district — which includes resigning from her parent leadership role — is […]
The Economist: The immense harm this has done to children’s prospects might be justified if closing classrooms were one of the best ways of preventing lethal infections among adults. But few governments have weighed the costs and risks carefully. Many have kept schools shut even as bars and restaurants open, either to appease teachers’ unions, […]
The Economist: n the first three months of the pandemic Shawnie Bennett, a single mother from Oakland in California, lost her job and her brother, who died of covid-19. Grief made the trials of lockdown more difficult—including that of helping her eight-year-old daughter, Xa’viar, continue her schooling online. In November Ms Bennett signed her daughter […]
Thomas Edsall: There has been almost no increase in the increment to individual earnings for each year of schooling between K and 12 since 1980. It was roughly 6 percentage points per year in 1980, and it still is. The earnings increment for a B.A. has risen from 30.4 percent in 1980 to 50.4 percent […]
Mississippi’s remarkable NAEP progress was dismissed by some as “nowhere to go but up.” This regression to the mean theory often gets used to dismiss progress in previously low performing states, including AZ and FL. There however is **nothing** inevitable about progress/THREAD pic.twitter.com/fQDhBEpdnh — Matthew Ladner (@matthewladner) June 21, 2021 2017: West High Reading Interventionist […]
Libby Sobic: On Thursday, the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) finalized the state budget, which now heads for a full vote of the legislature. Legislative Republicans voted to invest in our students, their families and Wisconsin taxpayers. Here are four takeaways you should know: JFC Republicans updated the budget and addressed the issue of the federal […]
Jeneen Interlandi: Scientists there had been far too slow to detect the virus, to develop an accurate diagnostic test for it or to grasp how fast it was mutating. Their advisories on mask-wearing, quarantine and ventilation had been confusing, inconsistent and occasionally dead wrong. And during the Trump administration, agency leaders stood by while politicians […]
Marty Mac: A mind trained with the written word is different from a mind without it. The organization of thought required for reading is very different from that in an oral environment. The differences come entirely from communicative form. Oral communication is nearly always discursive. Even when someone gives a monologue, it is to an […]
Matthias Revers & Richard Traunmüller: Although universities play a key role in questions of free speech and political viewpoint diversity, they are often associated with the opposite of a free exchange of ideas: a proliferation of restrictive campus speech codes, violent protests against controversial speakers and even the firing of inconvenient professors. For some observers […]