Federal COVID relief funding will dry up soon. Are districts ready?

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For the past couple of years, the Detroit Public Schools Community District has been able to tap its share of federal COVID relief aid to fund after-school enrichment programs that help students recover from learning lost during the pandemic.

But those funds will soon run out, and Detroit and other districts face some tough decisions about which programs and employees they can afford to keep once federal support is gone. …Read More

How to be proactive in your cybersecurity strategy

Keeping K-12 schools safe from cyberattacks has become a growing concern for educational institutions, especially as these attacks increase in sophistication and frequency nationwide. This past September, a school district in Detroit was hit with a cyberattack that closed its schools for two days. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the country, was also subject to an attack over Labor Day weekend, which shut off access to email and crippled the district’s website and critical systems.

These attacks have been a wake-up call to school districts about the risk of cybercrimes and the impacts they can have on operations. But why are cybercriminals drawn to them?

Why Schools Have Increasingly Become the Target for Cybercrime…Read More

Detroit Public Schools Community District Adopts Curriculum Associates’ Magnetic Reading™ to Help Accelerate Learning and Build Students’ Critical Reading Skills

NORTH BILLERICA, Mass., September 1, 2021—Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) in Detroit, MI recently adopted Curriculum Associates’ Magnetic Reading program for students in Grades 3–5. This supplemental program, which will be used by approximately 12,000 students across 74 schools in the district, helps teachers facilitate lively classroom discourse and engage all students with grade-level content as they build their confidence and master critical reading skills.

“A strong reading foundation is so critical to students’ ongoing success,” said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. “As part of our continued partnership with the district, we look forward to supporting DPSCD teachers as they work to accelerate learning and drive reading outcomes for their elementary students.”

With Magnetic Reading, teachers are provided actionable data and insights, knowledge-rich learning, culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy, and scaffolds to support learner variability. The program works seamlessly with i-Ready® Assessment, a program used by DPSCD to provide data-driven insights about each student’s skill level. Using the data from i-Ready, as well as Magnetic Reading’s Grade-Level Scaffolding report, teachers are able to craft a success plan for each student, student group, or strategic pairing by assigning specific Magnetic Reading units and lessons.…Read More

Turning education upside down

Three years ago, Clintondale High School, just north of Detroit, became a “flipped school” — one where students watch teachers’ lectures at home and do what we’d otherwise call “homework” in class, The New York Times reports. Teachers record video lessons, which students watch on their smartphones, home computers or at lunch in the school’s tech lab. In class, they do projects, exercises or lab experiments in small groups while the teacher circulates. Clintondale was the first school in the United States to flip completely — all of its classes are now taught this way. Now flipped classrooms are popping up all over. Havana High School outside of Peoria, Ill., is flipping, too, after the school superintendent visited Clintondale. The principal of Clintondale says that some 200 school officials have visited…

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…Read More

Turning education upside down

The New York Times reports: Three years ago, Clintondale High School, just north of Detroit, became a “flipped school” — one where students watch teachers’ lectures at home and do what we’d otherwise call “homework” in class. Teachers record video lessons, which students watch on their smartphones, home computers or at lunch in the school’s tech lab. In class, they do projects, exercises or lab experiments in small groups while the teacher circulates. Clintondale was the first school in the United States to flip completely — all of its classes are now taught this way. Now flipped classrooms are popping up all over. Havana High School outside of Peoria, Ill., is flipping, too, after the school superintendent visited Clintondale. The principal of Clintondale says that some 200 school officials have visited…

Read more

…Read More