A recent Washington Post report on the exploding market for school security equipment and services caught our attention. It’s now a $2.7 billion industry, a figure that doesn’t include the millions spent on armed campus security officers. Metal detectors, facial recognition software, pepperball…
It may be remembered for its short-term savvy and long-term failure to meet expectations.
From the London Daily Telegraph: Schools in Britain are removing their analogue clocks from examination halls because students can’t read them. “Teachers are now installing digital devices after pupils sitting their GCSE and A-level exams complained that they were struggling to read the correct…
If the Hells Angels have softened somewhat, others are toughening up—and we bless them for it. A school district in Erie, Pennsylvania, faced with the increasing frequency of school shootings, has passed out baseball bats to its teachers. That strikes us as a neat compromise between, on the one…
I don’t know the book acquisition budget of the public library in the town of St. Michaels, a quaint little tourist trap on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I hope it’s large enough to buy several copies of Ryan T. Anderson’s new book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.…
The Washington Post recently reported a “sharp reversal” in the expected graduation rates for Washington, D.C., public schools after heading upwards in recent years. Only “42 percent of seniors attending traditional public schools are on track to graduate.” What happened? Mainly, it seems,…
The Washington Post last week featured this arresting headline: “ ‘A breach of trust’: A preschool, a church and a change in mission.”
"Here, you can be the policeman." Jenna (not her real name), a 4-year-old, hands me one of the dozen small figures spread in front of her, a black woman in a police uniform. “I’m going to be the doctor,” she says as she picks up another black woman dressed in a doctor’s coat. For the next few…
The Dallas Independent School District has plans to change up to 24 school names with connections to slavery or the Confederacy, according to the Dallas Morning News. The district has compiled a list of problematic names they’ve placed under review, a list that, expansive as it is, could be even…
The Departments of Education and Justice issued guidelines Friday to public schools on how they should accommodate transgender students to ensure their compliance with the administration's interpretation of Title IX, a law passed in 1972.
Hillary Clinton may be planning to close a lot of schools. At a town hall event today in Keota, Iowa, Clinton said she would keep open "better than average" schools:
At the conclusion of the latest installment of the endless Arab war against Israel, the leaders of Hamas simultaneously accused Israel of “genocide” against the residents of Gaza and took to the streets, dancing, ululating, and jubilating in celebration of their “victory” over the Zionist enemy.…
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published a month ago but just publicly released on Monday found that while the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken steps to see that ineligible beneficiaries do not receive reduced-price or free school meals, oversight still needs to be…
The government is putting its (big) foot down. No more junk food in schools. As Danica Lo of Epicurious writes:
Princeton University is restoring ties with Navy ROTC (NROTC). Starting this fall, students will be able to participate in a cross-town program with Rutgers University, itself established only recently, in March 2012.
Campbell Brown, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
On Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder are scheduled to make a joint appearance at Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, MD. The purpose of the visit is to hold a roundtable with students on "Solutions to Enhance School Climate/Improve Discipline…
A Missouri school district faces a $150,000 bill for Obamacare, according to a report on KMIZ-MO:
Elections, as we are too-often reminded, have consequences. You vote for someone who says that you can keep your health care plan and … er, bad example.
Obamacare regulations are forcing employers to cut employee hours at Indiana schools, according to the Courier-Journal.
When President Obama unveiled his Race to the Top initiative in 2009, the idea was to award $4.35 billion in federal grant money to states to replicate policies that boosted student achievement. That quickly changed and the federal money was instead used to persuade states to adopt…
There may actually be some movement in the long struggle to change and improve the way children are educated in this country. The forces of the status quo – especially the teachers' unions – have fiercely resisted just about every reform and they have considerable power. Still, the occasional…
President Barack Obama announced today that he's "asked the Vice President to lead an effort that includes members of my Cabinet and outside organizations to come up with a set of concrete proposals no later than January -- proposals that I then intend to push without delay."
The courts are moving with customary alacrity in ruling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel's request for an injunction that would have compelled teachers to return to the classroom this morning. Not so fast, the judge said, Wednesday would be soon enough, although “by then, the legal matter could be irrelevant.…
The strike by Chicago teachers continues. It is a hardship for parents and one more tough break for the students in Chicago's public schools, some 40 percent of whom drop out before graduating high school. Equally unfortunate are the 20 percent who do graduate but are still functionally illiterate.…
The Republican presidential candidates have spent the past year saying little about education. When they have addressed the issue, it has often been in terse calls to “turn off the lights” at the U.S. Department of Education. After a decade of runaway spending and regulations on education by both…
President Obama on Friday will "speak with juniors and graduating seniors and their parents about the need to prevent interest rates on federal subsidized student loans from doubling on July 1" at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., the White House…
Teachers, more than any other feature of a school, determine how well students learn. Parents know it; research confirms it. So it might seem reasonable to expect that securing good teachers would be a well-honed art. Instead, the way we recruit, evaluate, retain, and compensate our more than 3…
Thorne Bay, Alaska
On Purpose
Philip Brand has made an extraordinary journey.
President Obama was asked recently about "Waiting for 'Superman,'" the Davis Guggenheim documentary about public education which depicts a handful of qualified inner-city students competing for a limited number of spaces in charter schools.
The new documentary Waiting for "Superman", which premiered last night at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., follows several American students in suffering school districts and the reformers trying to fight and change the education system. But it was Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the District of…