Still widespread use of restraint and seclusion at schools
I was surprised to see this article by Christopher Cousins in the online version of the Bangor Daily News, “Data from schools show widespread use of restraint and seclusion, but validity of numbers debated.” Cousins reports that 800 of Maine’s 185,738 students were restrained at schools during the 2012-13 academic year in order to deal with their […]
College board moans stagnation of SAT scores
The College Board, which administers the SAT, issued a report yesterday (September 26, 2013) bemoaning that only 43 percent of SAT takers in the 2013 graduating class were college and career ready. That means 57% are not ready. What does that mean? The College Board set an arbitrary cut off, that is a 1550 SAT […]
Pre-K spending down but not everywhere
The New America Foundation on Sept. 24, 2013 released 2012 state and school district pre-kindergarten data, which the think tank says has never been published before. Their Funding Per Child widget allows users to see which districts in a specified state spend most and least per child on pre-K. “The National Institute for Early Education Research, from which FEBP […]
Q&A with KIPP’s Dave Levin about Technology in Education
Dave Levin, co-founder of the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) network of charter schools, has a lot to be proud of. His schools, which focus on inner-city minority students, are now operating in 20 states and producing admirable test results and impressive numbers of college graduates. One of his Los Angeles schools, which uses a […]
We have no idea what helps disabled children lead meaningful, productive adult lives
Anyone who cares for or knows a disabled child has likely wondered how to educate that person to lead a productive adult life. Is it best to educate the child in a conventional classroom, mixing disabled with non-disabled together? Should parents be more involved in a disabled child’s education? Depending on the severity of the […]
Survey of U.S. school districts finds that more than half of elementary, middle and high schools have wifi in every classroom
The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) released preliminary findings from a national survey of nearly 450 K-12 district technology leaders from 44 states on September, 16, 2013. Of course, the survey missed about 12,000 school districts and likely, the ones that responded might be more technologically advanced than many that didn’t. But I was struck […]
New dataset says almost a quarter of African Americans are suspended in high school
The Center for Civil Rights Remedies, part of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA, aggregated publicly-reported school disciplinary data into one spreadsheet and released it on September 12, 2013. They also created a new handy, dandy web tool to see suspension rates by district. The problem is that fewer than half of the states in the U.S. […]
Teach for America teachers found to be at least as effective as other math teachers
A new Institute of Education Sciences study conducted by Mathematica found that middle and high school math teachers from Teach For America and the TNTP Teaching Fellows programs were as effective as, and in some cases more effective than, other math teachers in the same schools. It’s a note-worthy finding because TFA teachers are often criticized […]
Report of troubles with using education data in Idaho
Bill Roberts writes in The Idaho Statesman on September 13, 2013 that teachers throughout the state of Idaho are unable to make good use of a much heralded Schoolnet data system because test score data arrive months too late and because some of the data is riddled with errors. One teacher reported that she “never […]
Clinical trials for textbooks and curriculum
When I first happened upon the Institute of Education Sciences‘s “What Works Clearinghouse,” I wrote a little piece back in early June 2013 about the Saxon Math curriculum. But I didn’t realize how ground breaking this research was. In fact, I worried that my post was a bit PR-ish for the Saxon Math program. But Gina […]
