If Massachusetts was a country

The self-proclaimed educational “reform” movement is busy packaging Common Core standards with high-stakes assessment, scripted curriculum, packaged test prep, the de-professionalization of teachers, and the privatization of school support services, Huffington Post reports. A big part of their argument is that U.S. students perform poorly on international exams when compared to children from other countries. In a recent book by Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World, she claimed that she found true educational excellence in Finland, South Korea, and Poland…

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Every student deserves the opportunity to succeed this school year

Nearly 50 million U.S. elementary and secondary students have headed back to school this week for the start of a new school year, the Huffington Post reports. These children and young people will head to class carrying backpacks and an immeasurable, invisible weight — their parents’ hopes that they will acquire valuable skills and knowledge and, armed with a good education, move upward on the ladder of economic mobility. But not all of these students will get a fair shot. Low-income children born today in Canada and a dozen European countries stand a better chance of improving their lot in life than low-income children born in the United States. Mounting evidence shows that the American Dream is increasingly out of reach, and that geography too often determines one’s destiny. Studies show that neighborhoods and schools with higher concentrations of poverty provide fewer opportunities for their residents and students…

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A new teacher asks: “How do I do this?”

He was a big man, a presence to be reckoned with on any football team, the Huffington Post reports. Dressed in a pressed shirt and colorful tie, he spread his arms out and gestured around the room. “I’m a new teacher here. How do I do this?” he asked. I knew what “this” was–a room with only a few windows, thick-paned and laced with heavy gauge wire, designed to keep what’s in, in; a locked industrial metal door; the squawk of walkie-talkies in the hallways. It was a classroom much like the one in the county jail where I taught high school students for ten years. But this classroom was in the Judge Connelly Center Education Program in the Greater Boston area, a residential adolescent treatment program for adjudicated young offenders, kids who had been in and out of the child welfare and justice systems, some for much of their young lives. I was there to talk with teachers and support staff about my own experiences working in incarcerated education…

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Advice from teachers to parents

The Huffington Post reports: Like many teachers, I have a good relationship with the parents of my students. I have been both a general education teacher (social studies and math) and a special education teacher, and found both ups and downs working with a variety of parents. I spoke to colleagues from across my teaching career and asked them what they would say to parents of their students, to provide perspective towards the workload that teachers have on their plate for 180 days of the year, plus professional development, planning, research and coordinating with fellow teachers on interdisciplinary curriculums. Our combined input has led to the following pieces of advice that hopefully sheds some light on this side of the teacher-parent relationship and encourages open communication for the benefit of students…

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Nurturing a STEM sisterhood

The Huffington Post reports that a popular adage holds that it takes a village to raise a child. What, then, can a village do to interest children–particularly girls, who are so underrepresented in STEM fields–in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math? I can attest that it was my own “village” — my teachers, mentors and family members — that led me along my path in STEM. While I was fortunate to have that support, many young people do not. Every single child enters the world driven by curiosity; it is the force that drives an infant to grasp for a toy or a toddler to taste anything within reach. Curiosity is the same fundamental driving force inherent in the pursuit of science. That makes part of our mission easy: a natural interest in STEM is already programmed into the minds of children…

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Head Start cuts services for more than 57,000 children

Head Start, the federal pre-K education service for low-income families, has eliminated services for more than 57,000 children in the coming school year as a result of the federal budget reductions known as sequestration, the Huffington Post reports. The cuts include a shorter school year and shorter school days, as well as laying off or reducing the pay for more than 18,000 employees nationwide. Others eliminated medical and dental screenings and bus routes…

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A society with poor critical thinking skills: The case for ‘argument’ in education

The Huffington Post reports that researchers have shown that most students today are weak in critical thinking skills. They do poorly on simple logical reasoning tests. Only a fraction of graduating high school seniors (6 percent of 12th graders) can make informed, critical judgments about written text. This problem applies to both reading and writing. Only 15 percent of 12th graders demonstrate the proficiency to write well-organized essays that consisted of clear arguments. Critical thinking and argument skills — the abilities to both generate and critique arguments — are crucial elements in decision-making. When applied to academic settings, argumentation may promote the long-term understanding and retention of course content…

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Barbie Mars-bound? Mattel, NASA team up to make doll Martian explorer

A new collaboration between NASA and Mattel, the largest toy company in the world, is turning the Red Planet a tad more pink, The Huffington Post reports. “Mars Explorer Barbie,” a new spacesuited version of the iconic fashion doll, officially launched on Monday (Aug. 5), to coincide with the first anniversary of NASA’s Curiosity rover landing on Mars. Mars Explorer Barbie is packaged with a cardboard cutout of the six-wheeled Mars Science Laboratory, decked out in pink. “Ready to add her signature pink splash to the Red Planet,’ [the] Barbie doll is outfitted in a stylish spacesuit with pink reflective accents, helmet, space pack and signature pink space boots,” Mattel wrote in a statement describing the new doll, which as part of the company’s “I Can Be” line of Barbie dolls has the added distinction of the being named the “Career of the Year” for 2013…

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Why engineers and scientists should teach children

Projects these days are especially complex, The Huffington Post reports. They require large teams and product cycles are long (over many years). So individuals do not immediately feel as if they have made an impact on the world, or that they have helped someone. The philosopher Alain de Boton makes some great points in this video about how we no longer know how things are made and there is an overall loss of a sense of control. This is why teaching children can be so empowering. It doesn’t need to be a dramatic career shift. It can simply be a volunteering commitment. But there is a critical mix that results in the experience being powerful for each person. Here is why a mentoring experience is so rewarding…

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Professor Sugata Mitra on teaching spelling and grammar: Phones have made it unnecessary

Well, this is an opinion you don’t often hear in the education world, The Huffington Post reports. Acclaimed professor and educational researcher Sugata Mitra suggested in an interview with British education magazine TES that he no longer thinks it’s entirely necessary for kids to learn spelling and grammar. He credits the proliferation of new technologies, such as the “autocorrect” feature on mobile phones, for phasing out such curricula. “Firstly, my phone corrects my spelling so I don’t really need to think about it and, secondly, because I often skip grammar and write in a cryptic way,” Mitra told the magazine last week…

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School choice: Part of the solution to our broken education system

One of the most important things we do as a society is educate our kids, The Huffington Post reports. Opportunity in education is the gateway to opportunity everywhere else — in our economy, in our society and in our democracy. All children, no matter who they are or where they live, deserve an equal chance to develop their skills and intellect. But today in America, too many kids don’t get that chance. We have a system in which politicians and bureaucrats have too much control, parents have too little, and students’ needs get lost in the shuffle. Big Government, even at its best, is inherently inefficient, and too easily distracted from core missions by special interests…

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Watch: Chicago student slams school board for massive teacher layoffs

In less than two minutes, nine-year-old Chicago Public School student Asean Johnson on Wednesday unloaded a heartfelt plea to save teachers while excoriating the Board of Education that signed off on last week’s massive budget cuts and teacher layoffs, The Huffington Post reports. “One thing I don’t about this board is that you only give us two minutes to speak and you give these corporate businesses, what, an hour to speak?” the student said during his emotional speech…

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