How our district improved a 5 percent attendance rate
Here at Eagle Pass Independent School District, we’re right on the border of the United States and Mexico. Approximately 95 percent of our students are Hispanic, and most…
New York Times
Fight over effective teachers shifts to courtroom
They have tried and failed to loosen tenure rules for teachers in contract talks and state legislatures, The New York Times reports.
Erased answers on tests in Philadelphia lead to a three-year cheating scandal
The first sign that something was wrong appeared more than two years ago when a company grading student tests from Philadelphia noticed that erasures from wrong to right…
The defiant parents: Testing’s discontents
Anna Allanbrook, the principal of the Brooklyn New School, a public elementary school in Carroll Gardens, has long considered the period of standardized testing that arrives every spring…
Technology is not driving us apart after all
In September 2008, two graduate students working for Keith Hampton, a professor at Rutgers, raised a camera atop a 16-foot tripod to film down into Bryant Park, the…
Accountability without autonomy is tyranny
When educational research reaches the public through the corporate media, the consequences are often dire, explains P.L. Thomas for the Daily Kos.
Schools use web tools, and data is seen at risk
Public schools around the country are adopting web-based services that collect and analyze personal details about students without adequately safeguarding the information from potential misuse by service providers,…
Professors in deal to design online lessons for A.P. classes
To ease the way for students grappling with certain key concepts, professors at Davidson College in North Carolina will design online lessons for high school students in Advanced…
An uptick in the hiring of women for tech jobs
There are signs that tech companies are hiring more women, but women still appear to make up far less than half of all new hires in the industry,…
F.C.C. Chairman calls for transforming the technology used by phone systems
Americans could soon be one step closer to getting that videophone they were promised in the 1960s, The New York Times reports.
Women gain in some STEM fields, but not computer science
A few weeks ago, I wrote about ways to get more women interested in computer science, The New York Times reports.
IBM to announce more powerful Watson via the internet
The New York Times reports: Welcome to the age of supercomputing for everyone.
Children thrive in rural Colombia’s flexible schools
Myriam Mazzo is a teacher in the central Colombian city of Armenia, a rural town of about 300,000 people nestled in the mountains southwest of Bogotá, The New…
In public education, edge still goes to rich
“There aren’t many things that are more important to that idea of economic mobility — the idea that you can make it if you try — than a…
New milestone emerges: Baby’s first iPhone app
Charlotte Deutsch, who will be 2 years old next month, has a look of pure delight as she swipes the screen of her mother’s old iPhone, and finds…
After misuse, a push for tutoring
A decade after it became law as a part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, a tutoring program heralded as an academic safety net for children…
Group presses for safeguards on the personal data of schoolchildren
A leading children’s advocacy group is challenging the educational technology software industry, an estimated $8 billion market, to develop national safeguards for the personal data collected about students…
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…
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…
Why are there still so few women in science?
Last summer, researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with…
Finding the beauty in math
Math has a bad rap, writes math professor Manil Suri in a recent New York Times op-ed, and would be better geared to students as a playful and…
Didn’t ace SAT? Just design microbe transplant research
The New York Times reports: High school seniors with poor grades and even worse SAT scores, you may be just what one of the nation’s most prestigious liberal…
Disruptions: Minecraft, an obsession and an educational tool
If you were to walk into my sister’s house in Los Angeles, you’d hear a bit of yelling from time to time. “Luca! Get off Minecraft! Luca, are…
Expecting the best yields results in Massachusetts
Conventional wisdom and popular perception hold that American students are falling further and further behind in science and math achievement. The statistics from this state tell a different…
No child left untableted
The New York Times reports: Sally Hurd Smith, a veteran teacher, held up her brand-new tablet computer and shook it as she said, “I don’t want this thing…
Loud voice fighting tide of new trend in education
Diane Ravitch made her name in the 1970s as a historian chronicling the role of public schools in American social mobility, The New York Times reports.
Beyond passwords: New tools to identify humans
The New York Times report that as everything around us becomes connected to the internet, from cars to thermometers to the stuff inside our mobile phones, technologists are…
Milestones in science education
“Leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today — especially in science, technology, engineering and math,” President Obama has declared.
‘Sesame Street’ widens its focus
The New York Times reports that on “Sesame Street,” a distressed cow has a big problem.
City makes test scores available on the web
Beginning Monday, parents of New York City public school students were able to see online how well, or poorly, their children performed on a new set of state…
The new celebrity: Tutors
Advertisements for star tutors in Hong Kong can be seen all over here: on billboards that loom over highways and on the exteriors of shopping malls, the New…
School standards’ debut is rocky, and critics pounce
The New York Times reports that the Common Core, a set of standards for kindergarten through high school that has been ardently supported by the Obama administration and…
Seeking better teachers, city evaluates local colleges that train them
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has used data to rate restaurants, track the repair of potholes and close lackluster schools in New York City, reports The New York Times.
At street fair, science replaces sausage
From a distance, it could have been just another New York City street fair, The New York Times reports.
Apps that know what you want, before you do
In Hollywood, there are umbrella holders. Outside corner offices, there are people who know exactly how much cream to pour in the boss’s coffee. In British castles, royals…
Under code, apps would disclose collection of data
Like food packages that display nutrition labels, some mobile apps could soon display information that allows consumers to decide at a glance whether the apps are good for…
Study finds spatial skill is early sign of creativity
A gift for spatial reasoning — the kind that may inspire an imaginative child to dismantle a clock or the family refrigerator — may be a greater predictor…
Japan’s ‘Science Women’ seek an identity
When she meets people off campus, Junko Tsuchiyagaito, 23, does not usually let on that she studies chemistry at the graduate level, The New York Times reports.
Humanities committee sounds an alarm
The New York Times reports that a new national corps of “master teachers” trained in the humanities and social sciences and increased support for research in “endangered” liberal…
Tablets in Dutch schools usher in a new era
Some of Robin Smorenberg’s students were shooting aliens on their iPads, The New York Times reports.