eSchool News | parents page 1

The purpose of a K-12 education: Who decides and how do we get there?

In a recent report by Populace (2022), 55 percent of American parents expressed their desire for educators to rethink how today’s K-12 schools are educating our children. The study found that, despite the widespread perception that American society wants K-12 schools to prepare students for college, college is not as important to parents as it used to be. Instead, the study reported, today’s parents would like to see their children develop practical skills “for both life and career” (p. 10), critical thinking skills that allow them “to problem solve and make decisions” (p. 8), and moral character traits such as “honesty, kindness, integrity, [and] ethics” (p. 20).

The Populace study reported that today’s parents want more individualized educational experiences for their children, with greater emphasis on students’ interests and personal/career goals than on a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Parents want their children to have learning opportunities across a variety of modalities, and they want learning to be assessed through demonstration of mastery as opposed to traditional assessments like standardized tests.

According to the Populace study, today’s parents believe that “better” (as in straight As and college bound) should not be the purpose of a K-12 education, but “different” (as in a customized educational experience for every student) should be. It seems that–at least for parents–the purpose of an American K-12 education is changing.…Read More

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What the F? Grading strategies for early career teachers

According to a recent study, grading is one of the least stressful activities early career teachers have to complete. Grading is time consuming, however, and more grading-related questions are popping up in the news these days. For instance, are teachers allowed to reduce grades for late work? Are students allowed to retake tests on which they did not do well? It is essential that teachers have a clear and supportive grading system in place to address the scrutiny of today’s students, parents, and other stakeholders.

Setting up a grading system requires more than a calculator. A philosophical foundation is important to how a teacher grades. Having a philosophical basis for grading helps instructors explain grades, their meaning, and their value to students, who may then see the grade as less arbitrary.Two common approaches to further mitigate this arbitrary nature include normative-based grading and criterion- or standards-based grading. To build a strong, meaningful grading policy, instructors must choose the approach that best fits the course design and student learning outcomes.

Instructors who choose a normative approach will grade based upon relative performance. A teacher’s fallback practice may be to grade on a curve; however, curved grading is philosophically flawed in most course level applications. Effective instructional design models and psychometrics generally anticipate that students can master an end-of-course exam with a 70 to 80 percent score. Exams that do not reflect that criteria may have been poorly designed. Otherwise, instructional challenges or lack of student engagement could be to blame. Some college courses simply provide a curved score for students to lower the failure rate or to stratify student performance. This, however, does not evidence how students understood the content. Curved grades only show how students performed in relation to other students instead of reflecting students’ mastery of the materials.…Read More

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Ransomware attacks show continued rise in K-12 schools

More parents report experiencing ransomware attacks on their children’s schools, according to new data from Kaspersky. This year, 14 percent of American parents experienced ransomware attacks on their children’s K-12 schools while their child was a student, an increase from 9 percent last year.

Among schools that paid a ransom to their attackers, parents reported an average ransom of $887,360. In 2021, the average was just $375,311. The Ransomware Attacks on K-12 Schools report revealed a number of other findings related to parents’ experiences with these incidents.

In October 2022, Kaspersky surveyed 2,000 parents of school-age children in the United States to find out about their experiences with ransomware attacks on schools. The results are compared to a previous report that posed the same questions to a similar group of parents in October 2021, as well as to an earlier report in June 2021 asking parents more generally about cyberattacks on schools.…Read More

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13 edtech developments at TCEA 2023

The 2023 TCEA Convention & Exposition offered the opportunity for educators to connect in person and share insights and innovations around teaching and learning.

Held in in San Antonio this year, TCEA 2023 was “the intersection of passion and possibility, curiosity and discovery, education and technology. And it’s the kind of learning that will change the story of education.”

Conferences gave educators–including administrators, classroom teachers, IT leaders, curriculum directors–to attend sessions targeted to their interests and their individual school or district needs. Content touched on social media in the classroom, IT challenges, innovative edtech tools, and more.…Read More

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4 ways we can use edtech for engaging, high-quality learning experiences

Hate it or love – technology in education is here to stay. Parents can feel it, and the numbers back them up. Edtech is booming, with 40 times more venture capital invested in the sector in 2021 than in 2010.

There is no question that edtech has brought new ways to support the learning process and was used extensively by schools to connect remotely to students who could not attend classes in-person during the worst parts of the pandemic. At the same it can also serve as a huge distraction and sometimes to the detriment of student’s growth and development. The data on this is clear. Remote learning during the pandemic led to significant learning loss among students and was a primary driver of the U.S.’ growing achievement gap – meaning that economically disadvantaged students and students of color were hit the hardest.

The conversation has quickly shifted from whether technology should be used in learning to how we can use it to improve learning and ensure that all students have access to high-quality educational experiences. Here are four areas we can start:…Read More

Does 4 equal 5? Research on impacts of 4-day school weeks

Four-day weeks are becoming more common in school districts, particularly in rural areas of the U.S. Many districts are finding students and families like the shorter school weeks. In fact, in a survey of schools with four-day week policies, 85 percent of parents and 95 percent of students said they would choose to remain on the schedule rather than switch back to a five-day week. While these shorter weeks are popular with stakeholders, might there be unintended consequences of four-day school weeks? Are there certain ways to implement the schedule that lead to better outcomes for students?

Most of what is known about these questions has come from research conducted in the last five years. My colleagues and I have studied the four-day week using quantitative and qualitative data from state departments of education, school districts, and the NWEA MAP Growth research database. These projects and other recent research on four-day weeks have shed some light on questions about the implementation and outcomes of four-day school weeks. The research analyzes qualitative and quantitative data to compare students’ experiences and outcomes on four-day and five-day school weeks. We find that there are both benefits and drawbacks to the shorter school week, and these tradeoffs can vary based on the characteristics of the school district and how they implement the four-day week in practice.

Benefits: What Supporters of the Four-Day School Week Are Saying…Read More

3 innovative ways to help teachers feel engaged and valued

As research reveals that relational trust leads to engagement and success, we are reminded that teachers hold our students’ stories and hopes—and here’s how school leaders can lay the foundation for relational trust so that school communities flourish.

In school environments, intellectual growth and community are treasured as exciting pieces of the work that teachers build. Relationships are critical to everyone in an institution. Working with people—in addition to working with the technology or materials or curriculum—means that cooperative interactions occur daily.

Because administrators, policy-makers, students, parents, and community members all play key roles in how society values the work of teachers, positive interactions become critical. For this reason, relational trust is a key factor within the learning environment to have engagement and success (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Bryk et al., 2009). Relationships are unique and take time to build. The impact of healthy environments can empower each individual into making authentic efforts, putting in the rigor/practice, and achieving goals. Keeping teachers engaged and valued, indeed, becomes the most critical aspect of society in order to develop the next generation of educated citizens.…Read More

4 reasons we put all of our district communications on one platform

With 22 schools and 8,000 students—nearly all of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch—we have to cover a lot of area in our district. We’d been using a number of applications to maintain open lines of communications with our parents and guardians. We knew that some were working, and others weren’t, and we wanted to create a more unified school-home communications approach.

In 2020, our new superintendent brought a robust communications platform with him when he joined our district. As soon as we saw the platform’s various functionalities and how it eliminated the need for all of those disconnected communications strategies, we were hooked.

Here are four reasons why we decided to consolidate all of our district communications on a single platform:…Read More

Parents are turning to schools for student mental health

School counselors and social workers, teachers, and administrators have always been integral to a parent’s support network. This is particularly true for children who struggle in class and have trouble accessing their curriculum. Collaborative communication between a school and parents is critical for ensuring positive student outcomes.

Although clearly an issue before the pandemic, the pandemic has increased our collective awareness of children’s mental health issues and schools’ role in addressing those challenges. At the height of the pandemic, we were aware of the toll that the effects of the pandemic were taking on the nation’s school children, but we were functioning in a survival mode. As we emerge from this survival mode, it is clear that our school-age children are in crisis.

According to an October 30, 2022, Wall Street Journal article, “A mental-health crisis among children and teens that had been brewing for years worsened as routines were disrupted in the pandemic and many kids faced isolation and loss.”…Read More

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5 ways to prep students for online learning success

Students who attend online school today range from homeschoolers, to those seeking an alternative to in-person public schools, to learners who want to mix virtual schooling with in-person learning. Also, some districts have decided to keep an online option open for students who choose that method.

And while numerous parents and students have chosen to make online learning part of their education, the transition can be challenging. As someone who’s been involved with online schools for more than eight years, here are five common areas of concern and tips for how teachers and parents can navigate these challenges successfully.

Organization and Scheduling are Vital…Read More

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