Sharie Lewis, chief financial officer for the suburban Parkrose school district in Oregon, always anxiously anticipates the outcome of her state’s annual legislative session. But this year she’s especially on edge. The state is bracing for a revenue shortfall of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, and has asked every agency—including the state education department—to…
Bugs often get a bad rap, but teacher Phil Dreste says insects, isopods, and spiders—the creepy-crawlies of horror movies—are actually a powerful teaching tool that can confer some of the same benefits as a class guinea pig or hamster does, such as learning responsibility and gentle handling. Dreste, an arthropod and reptile hobbyist, regularly uses…
Paying for educators’ parental leave can cost a district thousands of dollars. Not doing so—as the teaching workforce increasingly skews younger—could cost even more. That’s the overall message from a new analysis of teachers’ use of the benefit from the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. The vast majority of…
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared inclined to uphold two state laws that prohibit transgender girls and women from female sports. The justices engaged in more than three hours of measured and generally respectful consideration of cases from Idaho and West Virginia, which are among the 27 states that have laws designating boys’ and…
As schools contend with a decades-long slump in math scores — exacerbated by the pandemic — some are turning to this classroom strategy even for very young students. In recent years, more elementary schools have opted to departmentalize some grade levels in an attempt to boost academic achievement. The share of fourth and fifth grade…
I think that’s something that it’s really difficult for people to understand if they’re not growing up in Gen Z or younger. We’ll lump millennials in there too. So what does that mean that the rules of the games have changed in practical terms for Gen Z and older generations trying to understand today’s financial…
The complaint argues the rule is “an attempt to target organizations and jurisdictions whose missions and policies do not align with [the Trump administration’s] political positions on immigration, race, gender, free speech, and public protest.” “Politically motivated retaliation, like what the administration has done here, should have no place in America,” said Skye Perryman, president…
“We avoided discussion of myths vs facts,” Rogers explained, because research shows that students remember myths and confuse them with facts. Pulling from the failures of the anti-drug D.A.R.E. Program, the gambling materials tell kids what gambling is without showing them how to do it. “We’re not teaching them how to gamble,” Rogers said. Small…
“If those data are split across multiple federal agencies,” Cheng said, “there would likely be more bureaucratic hurdles required to combine the data.” Information sharing across federal agencies is notoriously cumbersome, the very problem that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11. Hiring and $4.5 million in fresh research grants…
Episode Transcript Ki Sung: Welcome to the MindShift Podcast where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Ki Sung. Today I’m speaking to longtime MindShift contributor Debra Farmer Kris. She’s a child development expert and author of the book, “Raising Awe Seekers: How The Science of Wonder Helps our…
