school (45)
By Valle Dwight, LD Contributing Writer
A high school in Texas recently recalled all of its yearbooks because there was a page that described particular special education students as being mentally retarded.
The school was tripping over itself apologizing for allowing the description and the commenters on the story are predictably decrying the PC...
By Leslie Crawford, Senior Editor
How do I feel about my child's kindergarten "graduation"? (Hint: the ironic quotation marks are a signal that you might want to brace yourself for a rant and here it comes.)
People, this is kindergarten! When I was a kid, we didn’t have graduations. We were delirious if, as was the fabled tradition at T...
By Carol Lloyd
Executive Editor
School violence. The very phrase is enough to raise the hairs on the back of parental necks everywhere. It's one of those things that nobody argues in favor of, right? But lately I've been encountering stories that touch on violence in schools and things are getting less clear, not more.
Last week, I heard...
Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor
Are video games bad for kids because they normalize violence and distract kids from reading, homework, and other pursuits? Or do video games — in moderation — play a positive role, teaching kids important skills like strategic thinking, problem solving, and decision making?
I've never been a fan of video games...
By Carol Lloyd
Executive Editor
In the crackdowns on bad stuff that happens at our schools, it always seems there's a case in which a school district or government official ends up crossing the line into utter madness. In enforcing zero-tolerance laws against violence, you get a policeman taking a kindergartner away in handcuffs. When a...
By Leslie Crawford, Senior Editor
My 14-year-old son's favorite TV show is the "Big Bang Theory." When it comes to canned-laughter sitcoms, it's pretty good. Plus, the show speaks to a teen like my son, whose favorite subject is science.
Basically, it's "Friends" for geeks: four twenty-something, science nerds...
By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor
Making math fun can be a tall order. With kids complaining that math is boooooooring (and parents often exacerbating the problem by openly agreeing), it’s a tough, underappreciated job. So where’s an enterprising, hardworking teacher to turn for resources?
One third grade teacher at a DC charter school turned to a...
By Leslie Crawford, Senior Editor
Two days after the Ohio high school shooting that left three children dead, a colleague told me her seven-year-old daughter had come home from school and mentioned her class had had a drill; the children were told a fictitious story about a robbery in the neighborhood and that they needed to know how to respond in...
Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor
There's a lot of bad education news out there, so I decided to pass on a little good news for a change. It's a novel approach to get kids into college — and help them stay there. The approach is deceptively simple: it sends kids to college in peer groups, called posses, that provide community and m...
by Carol Lloyd
Executive Editor
Any hour now the New York Times is supposed to publish the "value-added" data on 12,000 New York City public school teachers following a court ruling yesterday ordering the Department of Education to release the scores.
In the world of education politics, there's not much everyone agrees on. The...
