This and That

A lengthy and interesting chart of the generations currently living in the U.S. - Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials.  (This came to me via the Horace Mann news feed but has no attribution.)  I note that Millennials seem to span two generations, X and Z.   From Wiki:

Generation Z (also known as The Founders, Post-Millennials, the iGeneration, Plurals or the Homeland Generation) is the demographic cohort after the Millennials. There are no precise dates for when the Gen Z cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use starting birth years that range from the mid-1990s to early 2000s, and as of yet there is little consensus about ending birth years.

More interesting charts about urban versus rural that could play into discussions about public education from The Conversation.  They name four issues:

• Poverty is higher in rural areas.
• Most new jobs aren't in rural areas.
• Disabilities are more common in rural areas.
• Rural areas are surprisingly entrepreneurial.

From The Atlantic, How School Start Times Affect High-School Athletics.

The debate in Sag Harbor mirrors similar conversations in districts across the country. Hundreds of schools in 44 U.S. States have already delayed start times in response to sleep-science research. But in more than a few other districts, attempts to push back the opening bells have failed because of the kinds of concerns being voiced on Long Island.

On one side are parents who point to extensive research on sleep cycles of adolescents, effects of sleep on academic performance, and the safety risks associated with sleep deprivation. On the other are those who are worried about what changing start times would mean to their everyday lives—beginning with high-school sports. But given the startling correlation between poor sleep and athletic injuries in teenagers, perhaps those two camps have more in common than they realize.

Interesting article from Teacher Pensions, Why Do Private School Teachers Have Such High Turnover Rates?

Federal data from the National Center on Education Statistics (NCES) offers a potentially surprising revelation: Private school teachers have higher turnover rates than their public school counterparts, and it’s not particularly close.

As the graph shows, the teacher leaver rate is almost twice as high at private schools than it is at public schools. Both have increased over time, but private schools have seen their rates increase even faster. These data call into question many of the common explanations for changes to teacher turnover rates among public school teachers, such as No Child Left Behind, teacher evaluation reforms, or the Common Core. Those reforms, which applied primarily to public schools, simply can't explain the increases in teacher turnover in private schools. (In fact, during the NCLB era, public school teacher turnover did rise a bit, but private school turnover rose even more.)

To note, the rate of teacher turnover at charter schools is also much higher than at regular public schools.  Rate of pay, lack of security and lack of organizing as a group all seem to be factors.