background preloader

Barriers to excellent education

Facebook Twitter

Betsy DeVos, Chris Wallace spar over reopening schools amid COVID-19. The president and the CDC disagree on the guidelines for reopening schools.

Betsy DeVos, Chris Wallace spar over reopening schools amid COVID-19

USA TODAY Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said Sunday there was no danger in sending children back to school amid the coronavirus pandemic and stood by a threat to withhold federal funds from schools that do not resume in-person classes. "There's nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous," DeVos told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace. "We know that children contract and have the virus at far lower incidence than any other part of the population, and we know that other countries around the world have reopened their schools and have done so successfully and safely. " President Donald Trump has also pointed to other countries that had successfully reopened their schools, specifically citing Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden in a tweet last week. Wallace pointed out that those countries have far fewer daily cases of COVID-19 than the U.S.

Devos/ALEC- now education just another money making opportunity. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ speech to the American Legislative Exchange Council met with protests before she’d even arrived in Denver.

Devos/ALEC- now education just another money making opportunity

But teachers and activists aren’t the only ones objecting to the extreme, anti-public education agenda DeVos shares with ALEC. One of the great questions of our time is just how far to the fringe the right wing of the Republican Party can march before the business-minded set steps in and yanks the chain. ALEC’s education platform is providing a real-time test case. Virtually everything you need to know about ALEC’s education priorities is captured in the group’s most recent Report Card on American Education. Here, “forward-thinking” states like Arizona reign supreme thanks to a ranking system that prizes freedom from the education monopoly above all. Teachers Around The Country React To Investigation Into Ballou High School : NPR Ed. The year 2017 was a big one for Ballou High School: For the first time, every graduate applied and was accepted to college.

Teachers Around The Country React To Investigation Into Ballou High School : NPR Ed

Kate McGee/WAMU hide caption toggle caption. Betsy DeVos – Extreme Image Makeover as Champion of Special Needs Children. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos testifies during a hearing before the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on May 24, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Betsy DeVos – Extreme Image Makeover as Champion of Special Needs Children

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) This post originally first appeared at Common Dreams. Meet Betsy DeVos, champion of students with special needs. How America Is Breaking Public Education – Starts With A Bang! The ultimate dream of public education is incredibly simple.

How America Is Breaking Public Education – Starts With A Bang!

Students, ideally, would go to a classroom, receive top-notch instruction from a passionate, well-informed teacher, would work hard in their class, and would come away with a new set of skills, talents, interests, and capabilities. Over the past few decades in the United States, a number of education reforms have been enacted, designed to measure and improve student learning outcomes, holding teachers accountable for their students’ performances.

Despite these well-intentioned programs, including No Child Left Behind, Race To The Top, and the Every Student Succeeds Act, public education is more broken than ever. How to Make Every Grade More Like Kindergarten : NPR Ed. When Mitch Resnick was growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, he and his little brother were always making up new games.

How to Make Every Grade More Like Kindergarten : NPR Ed

For example, he says, "In the basement, throw a tennis ball so it goes between the pipes in the ceiling for two points, and bounces off the pipe for one point. " Trump Donates To Education Department : NPR Ed. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaks about a donation from President Trump to the Department of Education during the daily press briefing at the White House.

Trump Donates To Education Department : NPR Ed

Mark Wilson/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Mark Wilson/Getty Images Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaks about a donation from President Trump to the Department of Education during the daily press briefing at the White House. Betsy DeVos' Latest Speech at ALEC : NPR Ed. Hundreds of protestors hold signs and chant at a rally in front of the Colorado State Capitol Building, in Denver.

Betsy DeVos' Latest Speech at ALEC : NPR Ed

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is scheduled to deliver a speech to the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which backs school choice policies coast to coast. Sewing, cooking, woodwork... IT? Why Government must urgently fix the curriculum to get kids into computing. When Ian McCrae’s teenage son took digital technologies as one of his NCEA subjects, the Orion Health boss was pleased.

Sewing, cooking, woodwork... IT? Why Government must urgently fix the curriculum to get kids into computing

With a serious IT skills shortage affecting businesses like his, one more student heading towards computer science at university was a bonus. A few months down the track, McCrae’s view changed. He was shocked to find that instead of learning coding and working on algorithms, his son seemed to be spending his time writing reports - part of a curriculum which sees ICT lumped in with woodwork and sewing, not science and maths. “I suspect you can do the entire digital tech course without writing a line of code,” McCrae says – correctly, as it turns out. McCrae says instead of studying topics like coding, algorithms and logical reasoning, his son’s high school digital technology curriculum shares modules with the other tech subjects like hard tech (woodwork and metalwork), soft tech (sewing) and food tech (cooking).

5 Big Ideas That Don't Work In Education : NPR Ed. There are few household names in education research.

5 Big Ideas That Don't Work In Education : NPR Ed

Maybe that in itself constitutes a problem. But if there was an Education Researcher Hall Of Fame, one member would be a silver-haired, plainspoken Kiwi named John Hattie. Hattie directs the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He also directs something called the Science of Learning Research Centre, which works with over 7,000 schools worldwide. Over the past 28 years he has published a dozen books, mostly on a theory he calls Visible Learning. Obvious? Betsy DeVos Used God and Amway $ to Take Over Michigan Politics. On election night 2006, Dick DeVos, the bronzed, starched 51-year-old scion of Michigan’s wealthiest family, paced to a lectern in the dim ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel in Lansing to deliver the speech that every candidate dreads.

The Michigan gubernatorial race that year had been a dogfight of personal attacks between DeVos, the Republican nominee, and Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm. Gloomy, bleached-out b-roll of shuttered factories in anti-Granholm ads made the governor’s sunny economic promise that “You’re gonna be blown away” sound less like an aspiration than a threat. Anti-DeVos ads cut closer to the bone, with one depicting a cartoon DeVos cheering a freighter hauling Michigan jobs to China. It was an unsubtle reference to DeVos’ time as president of Amway, the direct-sales behemoth his family co-founded and co-owns, when he eliminated jobs in Michigan while expanding dramatically in Asia. Story Continued Below. Best And Worst Places To Be A Kid : Goats and Soda. Children on the North Cape in Norway live in one of the top countries for kids, according to a Save the Children report.

Norway is tied with Slovenia for the top spot. Jekaterina Nikitina/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Jekaterina Nikitina/Getty Images Children on the North Cape in Norway live in one of the top countries for kids, according to a Save the Children report. A recent report from Save the Children documents what many people have known for a long time — a baby is far better off being born in Europe than in sub-Saharan Africa. A Republican Lawmaker Wants To Turn In Students Who Don't Speak English To Save Money. Factory vs. Studio – Michael Dearing – Medium. From 2006 to 2014, I taught at Stanford University. This is the story of one of the activities I used in the classroom. The activity is called Factory vs. Studio. It’s a live simulation in the classroom that helps students understand the importance of start conditions when they’re managing a team.

Automation eating your industry? These are the skills that will always be valued in the workplace. By Alison E. Berman ✍️ If you’d asked farmers a few hundred years ago what skills their kids would need to thrive, it wouldn’t have taken long to answer. They’d need to know how to milk a cow or plant a field. They needed general skills for a single profession that barely changed. 3 Ways Exponential Technologies are Impacting the Future of Learning – SingularityU – Medium. Exponential Technologies Impact What Needs to be Learned In a 2013 white paper titled Dancing with Robots: Human Skills for Computerized Work, Richard Murnane and Frank Levy argue that in the computer age, the skills which are valuable in the new labor market are significantly different than what they were several decades ago.

Schools still use violence to punish kids. Depending on whom you’re inclined to believe, the recess exercise at Horton Elementary School in San Diego was either a physical education exercise instilling healthy practices or an instance of punitive physical abuse. Bias Isn't Just A Police Problem, It's A Preschool Problem : NPR Ed. A new study out of Yale found that pre-K teachers, white and black alike, spend more time watching black boys, expecting trouble. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption toggle caption LA Johnson/NPR. In Our Schools, Very young Black Lives Matter, Too. In Our Schools, Black Lives Matter, Too. Why Preschool Suspensions Still Happen (And How To Stop Them) : NPR Ed. What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?

5 Big Ideas That Don't Work In Education : NPR Ed. After a parent screamed at her, this first-grade teacher called the police. Schools as Punishing Factories: The Handcuffing of Public Education. Some Study That I Used to Know ~ What Do You Remember from High School? Success Academy undercover video shows no-excuses discipline at its ugliest. L.A. district continues to persecute one of the nation’s best teachers. In this 2003 file photo, Rafe Esquith, a fifth-grade teacher at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles, leads an innovative after-school group in his classroom. Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America. Texan who called Obama a gay prostitute wants to control textbooks. Mary Lou Bruner (Mary Lou Bruner for State Board of Education) Donald Trump Doesn’t Understand Common Core (and Neither Do His Rivals) Why Talented Black and Hispanic Students Can Go Undiscovered.

Study Finds More Evidence of Racial Bias in Teachers' Expectations for Students - Teaching Now. Recent Teacher Of The Year Resigns In Alabama Over Certification Issues. Teach Your Teachers Well.