“School, at its best, is about creating environments where students can develop into capable, adaptable individuals who are prepared not just to exploit what they already know but to explore, innovate, and grow in the face of the unknown. It’s a mission that feels more urgent—and more essential—than ever.”
“The curriculum didn’t engage the kids, several acknowledged. But again, they were not blaming the teachers who were teaching the required curriculum. They blamed the system, their system. “It doesn’t offer kids meaningful choices,” one superintended said. “The world has changed, kids have changed, and the curriculum hasn’t. Most of what’s taught in their academic […]
“It was an incredible victory for American schools. Fewer struggling math students meant more opportunities to complete advanced coursework, qualify for good jobs, and earn higher wages. Unbeknownst to us at the time, 2013 turned out to be the high water mark. Achievement stopped improving. First, it stagnated. Then, toward the end of 2010s, it […]
“Content-area literacy is an older idea, and it basically came about in the 1940s and kind of evolved from there. But, the basic idea of it was that you could teach kids to read their textbooks in the various fields if you just taught general reading ability, if you built their vocabulary, if you taught […]
“The College Board is piloting two CTE courses this school year. AP Networking Fundamentals and AP Cybersecurity Fundamentals are full-year courses that some schools across the country are trying out. They feature hands-on, problem-solving activities that cover fundamentals in the field and prepare students to tackle the current—and quickly evolving—cybersecurity landscape.”
“High schools across the country are slowly retooling to offer their students greater exposure to potential careers and job-specific training. Students, by and large, say they want this assistance. But preparing students to be successful in college and careers starts well before high school—and it doesn’t only involve occupation-specific training. Rather, employers in survey after […]
“This article attempts to reframe education’s purpose away from the recent market-based assumptions of neoliberalism and toward a renewed civic purpose for education in a changing society. We try to make the case for why public schools still matter to democratic preparation, what kinds of shifts are needed to equip young people to be full […]
“Will your students have the opportunity to be exposed to other religious texts such as the Torah, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Tripitaka (just to name a few) to compare and contrast their historical and present impact on societies around the world? …Will your policies also engage students in discussions of why humans […]
“Public schools can meet the requirements of a new Louisiana law that calls for a Ten Commandments poster in every classroom without violating students’ constitutional rights, Attorney General Liz Murrill argued. The law, signed June 19, has already been challenged in federal court. But supporters of such displays are emboldened by recent U.S. Supreme Court […]
“The guidance directs teachers on how to integrate the Bible into their classes. For example, they must describe how the Bible shaped Western concepts of justice and influenced documents like the Declaration of Independence and speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They must also explore biblical references to illustrate literary techniques like […]
“[Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters] issued a June 26 memo to school districts, directing them to incorporate the Bible into classes for 5th through 12th grades… Debates over teaching the Bible are woven throughout the nation’s history, said Benjamin Justice, a professor of educational theory, policy, and administration at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education […]
“Evolutionary zoology provides a framework to understand the emergence of human competencies such as creativity, curiosity, resilience and pro-social, even ethical, behaviors. Organic life forms of diverse species exhibit behaviors and traits that share common threads with these human capacities developed throughout the eras, and ongoing research provides insights into the evolutionary foundations of these […]
“As they choose a presidential candidate in the November election, California voters may also have an unusual opportunity to decide whether the state should add a new course to its high school graduation requirements. While supporters say the course is urgently needed, critics say the unusual step of putting curriculum-related issues directly to voters could […]
“A pilot to infuse Black history and culture in social studies curriculum is gaining ground in the nation’s largest school district, offering a potential model to overcome widespread political debates over how to teach race in public schools… The curriculum “acknowledges the history and the contributions of Black Americans predating slavery, which is where much […]
“In the three years since Orange’s novel became a mainstay of the Millennium Art curriculum, pass rates for students taking the Advanced Placement literature exam have more than doubled. Last year, 21 out of 26 students earned college credit, surpassing state and global averages. The majority of them, said Ouimet, wrote about “There There.””
“The study, published as a working paper this month, found that taking a high-quality computer science course in high school increased the chance that the student goes on to major in computer science in college by 10 percentage points, and increased the chance that the student would finish a CS degree program by 5 percentage […]
“As part of the curriculum redesign—which district leaders credit with more than doubling the number of schools that receive recognition from the state for high achievement—Maxlow in 2021 helped create a student-internship program. High school students can apply for a job to help conduct annual reviews of the district’s curriculum and classroom activities. The approximately […]
“Work-based learning (WBL) is a learning strategy that provides the opportunity for students to gain on-the-job training, develop transferable skills, and apply their knowledge to real-world situations through a partnership with an employer. The first post in this series explored how WBL aligns with components of competency-based education (CBE), including by actively engaging students in […]
“Four eighth-grade English language arts teachers, initially most concerned about their students’ disinterest in reading, stopped assigning any particular book and instead gave students wide access to books written for young adults, let them choose what to read (or not), and gave them time to read and openly discuss the books. We studied these classrooms […]
“AI systems are taking on repetitive, physically demanding, or hazardous roles, allowing human workers to engage in more intricate tasks — this is where the term “blue-collar AI” comes in, these are roles that do not require the individual to have deep data science skills, be a researcher, or to build complex algorithms. “Blue-collar AI” […]
“More schools are now offering “certificates” or “institutes,” which become the equivalent of a high school major. This is tapping into a level of student agency and autonomy that is positively fueling passions. In turn, this is leading to students becoming better decision-makers, which correlates with less stress and better time management, and the evidence […]
“Chen connected with his counterparts from ethics centers at four other institutions to form a consortium that represented students from a wide variety of backgrounds. The program has just completed its third year.”
“Earlier this year, another Stanford student taught a course on Swift’s 10-minute song “All Too Well.” Last year, classes about Swift’s songwriting and legacy thrilled Swifties at the University of Texas at Austin, Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and New York University — where Swift received her honorary doctorate alongside the Class of 2022. Rather […]
“A 2019 Stanford University study, Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A national portrait, found that two-thirds of students surveyed couldn’t differentiate between editorial content and advertising, and 96% didn’t understand why a climate-change website funded by a fossil fuel company might be suspect.”
““Programming will be obsolete,” Matt Welsh, a former engineer at Google and Apple, predicted recently… Welsh’s argument, which ran earlier this year in the house organ of the Association for Computing Machinery, carried the headline, “The End of Programming,” but there’s also a way in which A.I. could mark the beginning of a new kind […]
“Combating fake news with facts doesn’t work because humans are wired for emotion. It’s time for more creative tactics.”
“But right now, we have enough critics. What we need are more builders, more people who know how to create concrete instantiations of a fair, just and inclusive social order. To achieve that, we need more college educators who are teaching students how to be architects of a better system, not arsonists of the current […]
“I was present as the students’ teacher, Marina White, demonstrated the power of investing and compound interest. “This one decision, to give up a couple Starbucks every weekend and each morning you walk in here, can make you a millionaire by the time you retire,” she says. Many of White’s students are “in shock” when they […]
“Kwame Christian is the director of the American Negotiation Institute. He offers a simple, three-step technique to engage in tough discussions while keeping the conversation cool: 1) Acknowledge and validate the emotion. Recognize how everybody is feeling about the situation, even if it’s difficult. 2) Get curious with compassion. Ask lots of questions and genuinely listen […]
“When kids study music—intensively and over long periods of time—they become better readers.”
“It’s time to give imagination its due as a core cognitive power, epistemic workhorse, therapeutic wellspring and maker of adventures.”
“Decolonising the curriculum does not mean, as detractors might suggest, rather disingenuously, a superficial and rushed replacement of authors on book lists or merely throwing the Western canon out the window for the sake of doing it. The project has been slow in the making—even if it is something of a bandwagon today—and reposes on […]
“For the vast majority of schools, the four themes I have focused on here have not previously risen to the level of must-achieve outcomes. They live in our mission statements, but they have been lost amongst all of the other competing, important, and growing expectations that are placed upon our schools. Are skills like empathy […]
“Instead of telling people what to believe, we created these games to equip players with the skills necessary to identify, argue against, and prevent harmful misinformation from going viral.”
“A deluge of data released late last year confirmed what has long been suspected: The coronavirus pandemic caused widespread learning loss while also amplifying gaps across racial and socioeconomic lines.”
“One of my students said it best when she said, “Adults’ intentions might be good, but their solutions are really lacking.” From listening to my students, three themes emerged that I have not yet heard discussed in depth in the policy conversations around post-pandemic schooling:”
“To prepare students to participate in a globally interdependent world, Bok identifies several bodies of knowledge that student need to acquire: in global problems, international relations, foreign languages and literature, and comparative and regional studies. His advice is rather than mandating a particular course or two, institutions might require students develop genuine competence in one […]
“How can a humanities curriculum better serve students? First, teach grammar, logic, and rhetoric but not philosophy, literature, or other humanities courses to freshmen. Many freshmen are smart, ambitious, and motivated, but they do not yet have the intellectual capacities or the life experiences that they will bring into their junior and senior years.”
“Threshold concepts have five essential traits: 1) they transform the learner’s perception of the field, 2) that transformation is permanent, 3) they are integrative in that the learner perceives interrelated ideas in the same way experts in the field might, 4) they are bounded in that mastery allows the learner to move on to other […]
“To better equip students for the modern information environment, the report recommends that faculty teach algorithm literacy in their classrooms. And given students’ reliance on learning from their peers when it comes to technology, the authors also suggest that students help co-design these learning experiences.”
“The findings underscore the importance of having reached a basic knowledge level to be able to read and comprehend texts across different subjects.”
“When a student holds the learning compass, he or she is exercising agency, the capacity to set a goal, reflect, and act responsibly to effect change, to act rather than be acted upon.”
“We give children the opportunity to play, because when children are playing with something they get interested. And then you don’t have to teach, and you don’t have to police them either.”
“The reason for the class’s existence comes down to a simple and somewhat alarming reality: Even the most educated and savvy consumer of information is easily misled in today’s complex information ecosystem… By teaching ways to find misinformation in the venues many of us consider pristine realms of expertise—peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, reports by the […]
“Students need background knowledge about a topic to be able to understand a text about it, and the more background knowledge they have, research has shown, the more likely it is that they will be able to demonstrate the skills that U.S. schools assess. If students have never heard of the game polo, for example, […]
“At current levels of classroom implementation, we do not see evidence of differences in achievement growth for schools using different elementary math textbooks and curricula. It is possible that, with greater supports for classroom implementation, the advantages of certain texts would emerge, but that remains to be seen.”
“Arts integration should not replace arts education… She suggested a “three-legged stool,” with one leg being arts education, including dedicated classes in visual and performing arts, and the second arts and cultural offerings, such as artists coming into the school or visits to museums. The third leg would be the integration of the arts into […]
“The modern world doesn’t reward you for what you know, but for what you can do with what you know.”
“I would not accept someone else’s curriculum for a new course now. It is only through the development of the pedagogy that I can be fully prepared to teach the new course. I expect my first time through a new course there will be shortcomings, but this is how learning works. We cannot expect to […]
Technical ability: understanding how machines function and how to interact with them… Data discipline: navigating the sea of information that’s generated by these machines… And the human discipline: which is what we humans can do that machines for the foreseeable future, cannot emulate.””
“Carnegie Mellon University research professor Dave Touretzky said artificial intelligence in the STEM education space is practically nonexistent in the U.S, while countries like China have been at it for years.”
“We ask arts education to do something we seldom ask of other forms of education: justify itself in light of its effects on other fields. How often do we, for example, ask athletic directors to prove that playing baseball leads to better math skills or improves verbal skills? …Maybe instead of looking for research to […]
“Walter Isaacson: Schools should be nurturing curiosity… Ken Burns: respect people with different opinions… Sophia Rosenfeld: I would try to teach students something about the nature and history of truth.”
“It is based on a nationally representative sample of 3,023 American adults, making it one of the largest public opinion studies about the arts ever conducted. As one might expect when hearing from the public, we find a mix of assumptions challenged and observations confirmed.”
“The number of Americans studying abroad continues to increase and grow more racially diverse. Participation in short-term programs is booming, while the number of students studying abroad for a full year is decreasing.”
“The idea is that instead of focusing your efforts on becoming singularly great at one specific skill or task, you should strive to get proficient at a few related skills that can be woven together into a wider skill set that does make you singularly good at your profession or some general life ability.”
The medical benefits of engaging with the arts are well-recorded: As Lay notes, a collaboration between the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and stroke survivors living in Hull, England, encouraged patients to play instruments, conduct and perform; 90 percent of these participants reported improvements in their physical and mental health.”
““When we look at our metrics, we’ve already seen a dramatic improvement in schools that have a wall-to-wall IB program,” Chicago schools CEO Janice Jackson told Chalkbeat earlier in October”
Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical… [But] if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behaviour, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the […]
“Taking a course with a professor who makes learning exciting. Working with professors who care about students professionally. Finding a mentor who encourages students to follow personal goals. Working on a project across several semesters. Participating in an internship that applies classroom learning. Being active in extracurricular activities
“No matter how smart, educated, and well-resourced you are, when it comes to problem-solving, nothing can replace the power of lived experience.”
“It’s a way of creating frameworks that ask to be expanded and drive us to learn more. It’s a way of formulating a question, linking it to others, and teaching us to find answers.”
“Alumni who strongly agree that they were challenged academically are about 3.6 times as likely as those who do not strongly agree to say they were prepared for life outside of college. Similarly, those who strongly agree that they were challenged academically are about 2.4 times as likely as those who do not strongly agree […]
To restore balance between the art and the science of medicine, we should curtail initial coursework in topics like genetics, developmental biology and biochemistry, making room for training in communication, interpersonal dynamics and leadership.”
“All these kids are drama kids, and I’m a dramatic kid, so it really meshes well,” González added.”
Students who received multiple field trips experienced significantly greater gains on their standardized test scores after the first year than did the control students.”
Although Calculus is helpful for the 20-30% of bachelor’s degree students who enter college with a STEM major and are expected to take Calculus, what is the experience of the other 70-80%? …Currently, even in the best case scenario, students are still spending the majority of their time on material they will never use again […]
Minerva is a liberal arts college, but you won’t find the typical course catalog. Four principles guided the development of a structured curriculum: Content should not be the focus… The curriculum must be carefully structured… Courses should be seminal… Students need informed choice… Based on these four principles, the Minerva curriculum promotes a broad context […]
If we step back a moment, there is no lesson about employability and technical training to draw from Google’s hiring practices here, but rather a lesson about what employees want from a good manager.”
Labor market rewards to performing routine tasks have fallen, while the returns to workers ability to cooperate and adapt to changing circumstances have risen.”
Last year was the first time schools offered AP Computer Science Principles, which offers a wider variety of programming languages than the regular computer science AP. The course resulted in record numbers of women and people of color taking computer science courses.”
A year-long elective offered in an Indiana high school where students design and execute their own passion-driven projects. The course is called Innovation and Open Source Learning… Don tells me about how the course works, how he structures it to build in both accountability and freedom for his students, and how he’s changed and improved […]
They have to get permission from their other professors and they can sit in class and discussion sections, but cannot speak or participate in any online materials. It doesn’t matter what their other class assignments are, they have to prepare to do it all offline before they go dark for a month.”
The skills you learn in the humanities are exactly the skills you use in a job search. The humanities teach students to understand the different rules and expectations that govern different genres, to examine social cues and rituals, to think about the audience for and reception of different kinds of communications. In short, they teach […]
But at Feversham, the headteacher, Naveed Idrees, has embedded music, drama and art into every part of the school day, with up to six hours of music a week for every child, and with remarkable results. Seven years ago Feversham was in special measures and making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Today it is […]
The result: Musicians who began training later than age eight performed significantly better than either non-musicians, or their musical peers who began lessons earlier in life.”
It reports people who engage with the arts—either as a participant or observer—are more likely than others to participate in two varieties of compassionate behavior: charitable giving and volunteering.”
“In a digital age, we have new and different tools at our disposal to help us draw meaning from literature, and in this elective, we will experiment with some of these tools, looking at great works and at our own writing as well… By the end of the spring we’ll have an understanding of some […]
“Conversations are messy–full of pauses and interruptions and topic changes and assorted awkwardness. But the messiness is what allows for true exchange. It gives participants the time–and, just as important, the permission–to think and react and glean insights.”