How our schools are miserably failing our boys

Jennifer Fink:

Re-entry after winter break has not been easy for him. The rules and restrictions of school — Sit Still. Be Quiet. Do What You Are Told, Nothing More, Nothing Less. — have been grating on him, and it shows. His teacher recently emailed me; she’d noticed a change in his behavior (more belligerent, less likely to cooperate) and wanted to know if there was anything going on at home.
My guess, I said, was that he was upset about having to be back in school after break. I was right.

The lack of movement and rigid restrictions associated with modern schooling are killing my son’s soul.

Building an Accurate Statewide Dropout Early Warning System in Wisconsin

Jared Knowles:

For the past two years I have been working on the Wisconsin Dropout Early Warning System, a predictive model of on time high school graduation for students in grades 6-9 in Wisconsin. The goal of this project is to help schools and educators have an early indication of the likely graduation of each of their students, early enough to allow time for individualized intervention. The result is that nearly 225,000 students receive an individualized prediction at the start and end of the school year. The workflow for the system is mapped out in the diagram below: