News Stories of Interest

A story from PBS about improving middle schools made me smile:

In classrooms off the hallway, clusters of kids from grades six to eight worked on wood carvings, scrapbooks, paintings and podcasts, while their teachers stood by to answer questions or offer suggestions. For two hours, the students roamed freely among rooms named for their purpose — the maker space, the study, the hub — pausing for a 15-minute “brain break” at the midway point of the session.

Welcome to Community Lab School, a tiny public charter that is trying to transform the way middle schoolers are taught in the Albemarle School District — and eventually the nation.

Experts say students should also be given “voice and choice” — allowed to pick projects and partners, when appropriate.

Here, learning is project-based, multi-grade and interdisciplinary. There are no stand-alone subjects, other than math; even in that subject, students are grouped not by grade, but by their areas of strength and weakness. In the mornings, students work independently on their projects; in the afternoons, they practice math skills and take electives.

As a laboratory for the Albemarle district, Community Lab School is charged with testing new approaches to middle school that could be scaled to the district’s five comprehensive middle schools. The school has been held up as a national model by researchers at MIT and the University of Virginia, which is studying how to better align middle school with the developmental needs of adolescents.

By the late ‘90s, policymakers’ attention had shifted to early childhood education and the transition to college, leaving middle school as “the proverbial middle child — the neglected, forgotten middle child,” said Fagell.

I smiled because this is what charter schools were originally meant to be - lab classrooms in a regular school where new ideas were tried and those that worked would be sent out into the larger school community. That's where the idea of charters being hotbeds of innovation came from. But that never happened so I applaud this effort.

Another smile I had - this school also offers a "wellness" half hour where kids can talk or even play outside. 

I have been hanging onto this story for awhile, as you can see from the date. But I am very enthused with the idea of flag football for girls as a varsity sport. From the NY Times:

Flag football, a version of the sport in which players pull colorful flags from belts around their opponents’ waists instead of tackling them to stop play, has been rapidly growing in popularity. Since it is strictly no-contact, it emphasizes quickness and accuracy over physicality.

The announcement last month that flag football would become an Olympic sport in 2028 further accentuated the sport’s rise.

There are eight states that have girls flag football as a varsity sport: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and New York. C'mon, Washington! 

 

On the heels of that story is the announcement of a New Title IX Rule, this from the AP:

The rights of LGBTQ+ students will be protected by federal law and victims of campus sexual assault will gain new safeguards under rules finalized Friday by the Biden administration.

The new provisions are part of a revised Title IX regulation issued by the Education Department, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Joe Biden. He had promised to dismantle rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who added new protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.

Notably absent from Biden’s policy, however, is any mention of transgender athletes.

Ah, that last sentence - you may make a comment on it here but I do plan to have a separate post on this thorny issue.

 

In parent news, the parents of Ethan Crumbley, the high school shooter who in 2021 killed four classmates and injured eight others,  were each sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year. This is a HUGE step forward for gun accountability. And frankly, these results should put determineation into the hearts of parents with guns in their homes to secure those weapons from being accessed by children. 

From the AP:

The first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison Tuesday as a Michigan judge lamented missed opportunities that could have prevented their teenage son from possessing a gun and killing four students in 2021.

“These convictions are not about poor parenting,” Oakland County Judge Cheryl Matthews said. “These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”

The Crumbleys were accused of not securing the newly purchased gun at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health, especially when confronted with a chilling classroom drawing earlier that same day.

 The parents ignored “things that would make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of their neck stand up,” the judge said. “Opportunity knocked over and over again — louder and louder — and was ignored. No one answered.”

Meanwhile the mom blamed the school for not reporting her son's behaviors at school while saying he was perfectly normal at home. 

“I have zero help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the ... school,” he (Ethan) wrote. “I want help but my parents don’t listen to me so I can’t get any help.”

 Ethan Crumbley is already in prison for life without parole. From the AP:

Crumbley has become the first minor to receive an original sentence of life without the possibility of parole following a 2012 US Supreme Court ruling which found sentencing a child to life without parole is excessive for all but the rare offender, according to court documents in the case. He was 15 when he committed the gruesome attack. 

 

Interesting interactive map of private school enrollment and SPS locations. I must have seen this someplace and sent it to myself but I honestly don't remember where it came from. The address line includes Penn State maps.  

I see where former SPS Senior Research Associate in Research and Evaluation, Jessica K. Beaver, PhD, has left SPS to join the Gates Foundation. Sigh.

Another important story from my area of work - where policy makers get their education information. From Indiana University at Bloomington School of Education:

As policymakers and members of the media become more reliant on thought leaders and other opinion-shapers of public policy, a new report from the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy cautions that some of the most influential figures at research organizations have little to no expertise or training on the issues they speak on.

The report, “Edu-Thinker Influence and Expertise Rankings 2024,” ranks think tanks, and individuals working at them, on two measures: their influence and education policy, and their level of expertise. In total, the project examined 30 different think tanks or advocacy organizations and 162 specialists at those organizations. What’s interesting, CEEP Director Christopher Lubienski points out, is that a number of the most influential organizations and individuals really have no knowledge in the areas they’re speaking about.

Key Takeaways

• While think tanks and similar organizations often have considerable influence, their expertise - and the qualifications of many individuals working for them - is sometimes lacking.
• There is not a clear correlation between influence and expertise, and several prominent organizations have little discernible expertise in areas in which they promote policy ideas.
• Policymakers and the media need to be aware of the ideological agendas of knowledge brokers claiming to represent the research.
• Policymakers and the media need to do a better job of vetting the expertise of policy influencers.

 Who do I look to? Number 3 on their public influence list - the Network for Public Education founded by real education expert, Diane Ravitch.