High Schools

Even Before Pandemic, National Test Finds Most Seniors Unready for College Reading, Math – Inside School Research

1 day ago Jennifer

Little more than 1 in 3 American 12th graders read proficiently and fewer than 1 in 4 performed proficiently in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2019, marking widening gaps for struggling students in both subjects.

The results of the latest round of tests dubbed the Nation’s Report Card, which were administered before the start of the pandemic last spring, found the average math score has been Pflat since 2015, while the average reading score dropped 2 points on a 500-point scale. All told, while 61 percent of high school seniors who took NAEP last year

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Federal judge rules students have no constitutional right to civics education — but warns that ‘American democracy is in peril’

1 week ago Jennifer

In an extraordinary decision that referenced President Trump’s tweets to postpone the November presidential elections, U.S. District Court Judge William Smith said the public school students who filed the lawsuit were not on a “wild-eyed effort to expand the reach of substantive due process.” Rather, he said, they were issuing “a cry for help from a generation of young people who are destined to inherit a country which we — the generation currently in charge — are not stewarding well.”

“What these young people seem to recognize is that American democracy is in peril,” he wrote (see opinion in full

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CDC Clarifies ’15-Minute Rule’ for Social Distancing – Inside School Research

1 week ago Jennifer

There’s no reset button on COVID-19 exposure.

That’s the concern underlying new changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s definitions and guidance on social distancing during the pandemic, which will likely mean changes in some schools’ approach to preventing or tracing coronavirus outbreaks. 

The CDC now defines a “close contact” of someone with COVID-19 as anyone who was within six feet of someone infected for a total of 15 minutes over the course of 24 hours. For example, if a student came into contact with a sick classmate three times during a school day, for

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Teaching kids to spot misinformation on social media

1 week ago Jennifer

The material comes from the project’s newsletter, the Sift, which takes the most recent viral rumors, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and journalistic ethics issues and turns them into timely lessons with discussion prompts and links. The Sift, which is published weekly during the school year, has more than 10,000 subscribers, most of them educators.

The News Literacy Project also offers a program called Checkology, a browser-based platform designed for students in grades six through 12 that helps prepare the next generation to easily identify misinformation. During the coronavirus pandemic, the project is offering access to Checkology Premium at no cost

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Betsy DeVos, in anti-government polemic, says America’s public schools are designed to replace home and family

1 week ago Jennifer

Thank you, Dr. Arnn, for that kind introduction, for your leadership here, and for your unparalleled commitment to the “diffusion of sound learning.”

That line from Hillsdale’s charter is, by itself, a noble charge. Put in the context of your founding, it becomes a higher calling. Your founders believed then—as we still do today—that education is the means by which we secure the God-given blessings of liberty.

And under Dr. Arnn’s bold leadership and clear-eyed vision, Hillsdale continues to be a fertile oasis for those who seek truth in a higher education landscape that is rapidly deserting it.

Hillsdale’s founders

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How Should District Leaders Respond to Rising COVID-19 Rates in States? – Inside School Research

1 week ago Jennifer

Coronavirus rates are surging across much of the country again. That means school district leaders must prepare to make quick decisions about how they are operating. 

There are two main ways to look at how much the coronavirus has spread in a community:

  • the case rate;—or the number of people identified with COVID-19 for every 100,000 people in the community;—and
  • the positivity rate, or the percentage of the tests given in a community that come back positive for the virus. If a community has limited testing, it is likely to have a higher percentage of those tests
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Elite private school cancels classes the day after presidential election. Here’s why.

1 week ago Jennifer

Christian Sullivan, the head of Bullis School in Potomac, Md., sent an email (full text below) Oct. 14 to the school community saying one reason he had decided to close school on its 102-acre campus was to give teachers a rest after a chaotic fall that led to unprecedented changes in instruction because of the coronavirus pandemic.

As in many other public and private schools across the country, Bullis teachers are delivering instruction two ways — directly to students who are sitting in class and remotely to students who chose to remain at home. And they are doing it at

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Can Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Adapt to Remote Learning? – Inside School Research

2 weeks ago Jennifer

At a time when thousands of children may come to school with stress and learning loss from the pandemic and related school closures, multi-tiered systems of support—which can include response to intervention and positive behavior interventions and support, or PBIS—are the most popular school frameworks to provide personalized help for students. Now, emerging research and state experimentation suggest these models could adapt well to remote learning classrooms, if school leaders and educators plan.

With both response to intervention and PBIS, educators use a leveled approach to provide increasingly intense help to students with academic or behavioral difficulties. In general, Tier

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The problem with New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools during the pandemic

2 weeks ago Jennifer

Covid-19 rates in New York — which have been very low in New York City for months — are rising again in areas where ultra-Orthodox Jews have been disregarding orders to follow social distancing rules to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Hasidic Jews — the most traditional of the ultra-Orthodox Jews in the United States — protested the restrictions, setting fires and burnings masks in the streets of Brooklyn.

The Religion News Service reported that more than 400 rabbis and other Jewish religious leaders signed a statement supporting efforts by New York officials to shut down the schools and

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Other News

Empowering Students to Use Data to Understand Election Trends

18 hours ago Jennifer

Even Before Pandemic, National Test Finds Most Seniors Unready for College Reading, Math – Inside School Research

1 day ago Jennifer

School Board Elections Are Often Overlooked. They Shouldn’t Be

3 days ago Jennifer

How the Fight for America’s Suburbs Started in Public Schools

4 days ago Jennifer

This Week at DE: Week of October 25th

5 days ago Jennifer