U.S. students are lagging behind other industrialized students in math in a global assessment released Tuesday, according to Axios.
Students in the U.S. saw a 13-point fall in their 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) score compared to their 2018 results, according to Axios. The score was “among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics” and comes as U.S. students are suffering learning loss following the pandemic.
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Nearly 70% of students attended schools that experienced chronic absenteeism during the 2021-2022 academic year, according to data compiled by Attendance Works and Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University.
Before the pandemic, 25% of students attended a school with high levels of chronic absenteeism, but during the 2021-2022 academic year at the percentage rose to 66%, according to the report from Attendance Works, a nonprofit focusing on absenteeism, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, which focuses on high school graduation. Nearly 14.7 million students, or 29.7%, were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year.
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This year’s Jack Daniel’s New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park will go towards supporting students and their families who are experiencing homelessness through the Homeless Education Resource Office (HERO) Program of Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS).
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Ohio falls short in creating competition between public schools and allowing students to find the best schools that work for them, according to a recent report.
The Reason Foundation examined each state’s open enrollment policies, evaluating them based on best practices. The report said 73% of parents support open enrollment for public schools.
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Schools across Wisconsin have not yet rebounded from enrollment losses during the coronavirus outbreak.
A recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found more than 4,500 students are still “missing.”
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Greater Georgia, a nonprofit organization focused on voter engagement in the state, announced Thursday it is partnering with the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement to launch a new voter registration contest for high school students across the Peach State.
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Not a single student is proficient in math at 40% of Baltimore public high schools in the spring of 2023, according to state exam results obtained by Fox45.
Nearly 2,000 students took the state math exam across the 13 schools with no proficient students. Of the students who took the exam at those schools, 74.5% of them received the lowest possible score, Fox45 reported.
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A couple of years ago, I received a post-semester email from a student’s father. He was upset about his child’s final grade in my class, which had landed somewhere between a high B and a low A.
The grade was clearly not very low, but the student’s father wanted me to reconsider. Apparently, a specific assignment’s less-than-perfect score had kept his son from making the honor roll.
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There are a couple of hundred more students at University of Wisconsin schools this fall after the university released its fall 2023 enrollment numbers.
“The estimates show an enrollment of 161,322 for fall 2023, an increase of 540 over fall 2022. For new freshman students, the estimates indicate an increase of 592 students in fall 2023 at UW System universities not including UW-Madison, which deliberately sought to reduce the number of incoming first-year students after last year’s incoming class was slightly larger than anticipated,” the university said in a statement.
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The University of Michigan’s COVID-19 policies tell students who test positive to “make an isolation plan” for five days by getting a hotel, going home or staying with a friend off campus.
“Make an isolation plan, which could include relocating to your permanent residence, staying with a nearby relative or friend, or finding a hotel space,” the U-M guidance says.
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It’s back to school for Florida students and many others across the country this week. The first days and weeks of a new school year are always filled with anticipation, adjustments, transitions and growth for parents and students. Yet, this school year’s “firsts” for an expanding pool of families also includes the first time that their children will have the resources and freedom to enroll in the school of their choice. The short and long-term consequences of these new opportunities aren’t just experienced within the four walls of a home or school building, or by the families now empowered to pursue them – the impact of education choice stretches across communities and economies, helping to unleash prosperity and growth that benefits everyone.
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In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released a report titled, “A Nation at Risk,” which was an important point in the history of American education. The document used dire language, asserting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
The report also stated: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
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The Ivy League school Harvard University is now encouraging its students to start using food stamps rather than spend money on food.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, a flier for an event hosted earlier this year by Harvard’s Health Services asks students “did you know that Grad Students may qualify to receive assistance paying for food & groceries?”
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Schools across the country are struggling to get kids to class while still recovering from the learning loss following the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The New York Times.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress released a report this month showing that students who missed three or more days of school had lower math scores than those who were not absent. Schools, however, are having trouble finding bus drivers to get children to class, with some districts delaying their start times each day and others forced to postpone school for a week, according to the NYT.
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Florida officials project that taxpayer-funded student aid will increase in coming years as more students graduate from high school in the Sunshine State.
The Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research’s Education Estimating Conference was held on Friday to discuss projections for various scholarship programs for Florida college students in fiscal 2023-24 to fiscal 2028-29.
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Following the recent Supreme Court decision overturning race-conscious admissions, certain sections of the media have adopted an alarmist tone, fueling doomsday predictions. Others are keen to celebrate the end of discriminatory practices that educational institutions have adopted for nearly 60 years.
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School-aged students in eleven economically distressed counties across Tennessee will receive a backpack courtesy of First Lady Maria Lee’s ‘Tennessee Serves’ initiative at the beginning of this upcoming school year.
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Tennessee’s college-going rate increased 1.5% for the Class of 2022, a year after statewide numbers significantly decrease since 2017.
The state’s rate is now 54.3%, including this year’s highest increase since Tennessee Promise began, according to a new report from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.
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Students at Tennessee had the equivalent of 34 more days of learning in reading per year in public charter schools than at their regular public school, according to a study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.
In math, the students had the equivalent of 39 days more of learning, according to the study.
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In Michigan, local school district evaluations stated that there were only 165 teachers out of the 115,910 evaluated in 2021-22 that were found to be “inefficient.”
Statistically, that translated to 0%. In fact, 99% of all Michigan public school teachers last year were rated either as “highly efficient” or “efficient,” the highest two of four evaluation categories.
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Just 5% of Michigan students are rated “proficient” in a district with 99% of teachers rated “highly effective” or “effective.”
The classification of students for Detroit public schools comes from the latest national testing referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card.” The classification of their teachers is provided to the Michigan Department of Education by The Center for Educational Performance and Information.
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The Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) Governing Board held a meeting Thursday night on whether or not to look into a policy limiting the use of restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex. The board rejected the proposal, agenda item 8.5, in a 3-2 vote. It had become an issue for the district due to a male student, who does not identify as transgender, entering the girls’ restrooms, watching them, and uploading videos he took to TikTok.
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State abortion laws may be swaying students’ decisions about their college futures, according to study results first published by Gallup on Thursday.
Approximately 72% of currently enrolled college students admitted that state abortion laws play an important role in determining whether to stay enrolled, according to the poll, which was conducted in partnership with the Lumina Foundation. While smaller, a majority of respondents aged 18-59 who are not currently enrolled in higher education admitted that they would consider the abortion law of the state a college or university is located before enrolling.
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The education disruption caused by mass school closures and prolonged remote instruction beginning three years ago this month led many families to seek other learning options beyond an assigned district school. Emerging research reveals just how significant and sustained that shift was.
In a new report, “Where the Kids Went: Nonpublic Schooling and Demographic Change during the Pandemic Exodus from Public Schools,” Stanford economist Thomas Dee reveals that more than 1.2 million students left district schools during the pandemic response. That exodus endured throughout the 2021/2022 academic year, as families continued to opt for private schools and homeschooling even though most district schools reopened.
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The University of Arizona proposed a 3% increase in tuition for all incoming resident undergraduate students, effective in the 2023-24 academic year. Out-of-state incoming students will experience a 4% increase in tuition.
Current students will not be affected by the change, thanks to the Guaranteed Tuition Program, which started in 2014. The program ensures that all undergrad degree-seeking students will pay the same tuition and fees throughout their time at the university.
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Imagine for a moment that beneficiaries of affirmative action were randomly selected. Suppose instead of applying affirmative action by race, we randomly assigned every person a number between one and five. Colleges would reserve portions of enrollments so that people with a “one” would only compete against other ones for a reserved number of slots. Likewise, those with a “two” would compete against each other for slots reserved for twos. And so on.
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Florida schools will no longer ask student-athletes to share their menstrual histories to play high school sports, after an effort to make the optional questions mandatory.
The state’s High School Athletic Association’s board of directors voted 14-2 Thursday in an emergency session to adopt a proposal to remove the questions from a pre-participation physical evaluation form, according to NBC News.
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State Senator John Lundberg (R-Bristol) recently took the state test administered annually to Tennessee’s third-grade students. He said he found it to be fair, devoid of trick questions, and completable in a reasonable time frame.
In a phone conversation with The Tennessee Star, Lundberg said, “I heard a lot of concerns from parents around third-grade retention, and TCAP [Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.] I felt I owed it to them to delve deeper into the subject, and so I asked the department of education to allow me to take the test.”
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During the last few years, most conservatives have become at least dimly aware that leftist ideology, in the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), has infected public education. It’s unlikely, however, that many Americans realize just how far the disease has advanced. It has long since spread beyond a few courses embedded into the social studies curricula of secondary schools and elite colleges. Public school students as young as 9 and 10 years of age effortlessly recite leftist shibboleths even as they descend into functional illiteracy in reading, writing, math, and science.
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As millions of children settle into an uninterrupted academic term, widespread classroom disorder is undermining efforts to reintroduce students to in-person learning.
This increased disorder corresponds with an increase in district-approved “restorative justice” programs, which address classroom dysfunction through nonpunitive measures. Though these programs have existed for decades, they are gaining momentum nationwide.
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A western Arizona public school district was found by state auditors to have put children on dangerous buses, run illegitimate nonprofits for decades, and misappropriated funds to the point where teachers’ pay couldn’t be fulfilled.
According to the results of an investigation by the auditor general, Hyder Elementary School District #16 in Southwest Arizona failed basic protocols in four areas, “putting public monies, sensitive computerized data, and student safety at risk.”
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Do parents have the right to know what their children are being taught in public school?
Parents say yes; teachers say no.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple. The description of the latter party can be tweaked to “teachers unions” — although you don’t hear many individual teachers bucking the union line — but the dichotomy remains: parents want to know what’s going on in their kids’ classrooms, and teachers, administrators, and their union bosses would rather not tell them.
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Little Falls parents accused school officials of failing to keep students safe and attempting to “cover up” a recent incident involving a disabled middle-school student during a school board meeting this week.
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The School District of Philadelphia will review language it proposes to be formally included in its existing policy that allows students to pick the gender of the team for which they want to play.
The agenda for the Dec. 15 school board meeting has new language under “Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Student Participation” policy for interscholastic activities that states, “Students participating in interscholastic athletics may participate on the team of the gender with which they identify.”
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Something has gone awry in American education. For example, over the past decades, the U.S. has dropped to the bottom of international rankings for developed countries in math. This decline has coincided with education reform, a shift that has emphasized understanding and downplayed practice. Could something that sounds so sensible have possibly been responsible for the drop?
The brain has two major learning systems. One is based on practice, and leads to fast, automatic behavior. This system is not accessible by conscious thought and is the source of intuition. The second system is based on deliberate thought—it is slow but flexible. You are consciously aware and can verbalize what you have learned. These two systems are roughly analogous to Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s “thinking, fast and slow.”
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Since the pandemic began, Pennsylvania’s public charter schools enrollment has gone up by almost 12% as parents have chosen to take their children out of traditional public schools.
According to a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the change isn’t unique to Pennsylvania. Since the 2019-20 school year, the 41 states examined in the report with charter systems had a 7% increase in charter school enrollment and about a 3.5% decrease in public school enrollment.
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Vanderbilt University recently announced that all future first-year doctoral students will receive a $2,000 stipend in order for the graduate school experience to be “supported” and “enhanced” while also placing entering students on “more firm financial footing.”
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With the upcoming Midterm election on November 8th, Ohio election officials want young people to register to vote, but they also need them to come and be trained to be poll workers.
According to the Pew Research Center, older people are the primary individuals serving as volunteer poll workers in U.S. elections.
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A new analysis of data from the Nation’s Report Card shows that Tennessee students lost, on average, what equals five months of math learning between 2019 and 2022 while the state’s students lost four months of reading learning.
The Education Recovery Scorecard, from researchers at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project, includes interactive district-level learning loss information from across the state of Tennessee and the country.
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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and the City of Knoxville announced a partnership launching a fellows program for Baker Center students.
The program would allow the students to “work directly in a variety of departments or agencies with the City of Knoxville,” according to a Friday press release by the City.
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The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) rankings indicate that Florida students are “well ahead of their peers, especially with younger and educationally at-risk students who were harmed the most from distance-learning in other states,” the governor said.
“We insisted on keeping schools open and guaranteed in-person learning in 2020 because we knew there would be widespread harm to our students if students were locked out,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. The results, he said, “once again prove that we made the right decision.”
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A new report was released by the Beacon Center of Tennessee on Wednesday examining the return on investment for students and taxpayers at Tennessee’s public universities and colleges.
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One of the most banned controversial books in the United States, according to the New York Times, has been removed from Columbus City Schools high school library shelves.
The autobiography, Gender Queer: A Memoir, was published in 2019 and is both written and illustrated by Maia Kobabe. The 240-page book tells Kobabe’s story from adolescence to adulthood covering sensitive topics such as gender identity, masturbation, menstruation, and navigating the world as someone who considers themself nonbinary.
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Three local school districts in Ohio are teaching students about where the food they eat at school is grown, as well as adding to the overall menu variety, as part of a pilot program through Feed Our Future’s Local Menu Takeover.
This pilot program started last year in Northeast Ohio, and this year, three Cincinnati school districts have committed to serving only locally sourced meals this week as part of Farm to School Month.
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Idaho universities told educators that advising students to get an abortion could result in a felony, according to the Associated Press.
The University of Idaho in Moscow and Boise State University in Boise both issued notes to staff in September warning that “promoting” abortions or abortion services could result in felony charges, according to the AP. Educators are prohibited from advising students on abortion services under the state’s No Public Funds for Abortion Act.
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The University of Tennessee (UT) recently announced that enrollment at nearly every UT campus across the state has increased.
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Religious release time programs increase in popularity as optional classes during the school day.
Pastor Claude Davis of New Life Church in Whitehall, the facilitator of a released time program, said that their program drastically jumped from a mere 18 students on the first day to 269 students in attendance last year.
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One of the nation’s most prestigious universities is ordering students to attend mandatory training on using “correct” pronouns for their fellow students, warning that using their real pronouns may constitute “abuse” and could lead to disciplinary action.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Ivy League school Harvard University now requires all students to attend mandatory Title IX training sessions. At these sessions, they are told, among other things, that “using the wrong pronouns” for students who believe they are a different gender constitutes “abuse,” and that “any words used to lower a person’s self-worth” are “verbal abuse.”
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Mentor Schools is withholding mental health information about transgender or transitioning students from parents.
An Ohio school board meeting on Tuesday, September 13th raised concern in parents over an e-mail which went out to teachers in the district informing them that they are not required to inform parents if a student, 11 years old or older, who is transgender or transitioning asks to use a different name or pronoun.
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A California school district is offering books with pornographic scenes in its school websites, and parents are planning to take action.
Poway Unified School District in Poway, California, is giving students access to several books that feature pornographic scenes, according to the library databases. Several parents have compiled a database of age-inappropriate content in the district libraries and brought it to the attention of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, a group that focuses on equal rights in education, the Executive Director of the group, Wenyuan Wu told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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