News Day

More time in school should give more education. Frustrated teachers say that’s not what happened when Chicago lengthened its shortest-in-the-nation school day in 2012. The longer day came from requiring students to show up at the same time as their teachers, which sounds great, but eliminated time that teachers used for preparation and for collaboration with colleagues. Continue reading →

Money is a terrible way to measure the value of a college major, writes Jordan Weissman in The Atlantic. He’s right, even if that goes against today’s conventional wisdom. For a college major, and for a life’s work, following your passion will serve you better than following the money. Continue reading →

Lots of people know how to close the achievement gap: better teachers, more standardized instruction, longer school days, free preschool for all, stricter discipline, more testing, less testing … the list goes on and on. No single solution is a silver bullet that can deliver success. Continue reading →

In my last post, I wrote about the study by Greg J. Duncan and Aaron J. Sojourner, Can Intensive Early Childhood Intervention Programs Eliminate Income-Based Cognitive and Achievement Gaps? They found than an intensive early childhood program including home visits and full-time, high-quality preschool from age one to three could essentially eliminate the income-based achievement gap by age three. Continue reading →

Wow – I can’t believe that I agree with an entire David Brooks column, in which he advocates “building lifelong social and emotional development strategies from age 0 to 25,” including ready access to contraception, teaching parenting skills, “counseling and treatment, in which the psychic traumas that go with poverty are recognized and addressed,” for kids in elementary schools, and lots of programs to help teens.  “It Takes a Generation” comes at the end of a week packed with news about what children need to succeed. Continue reading →

“We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it,” Dorothy Day said. We must also talk about homelessness, because it’s still here — right here in St. Paul (and also, of course, in Minneapolis and the rest of the state.) Continue reading →

In early January, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder jointly announced new federal guidelines on school discipline. Why? “Racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem today, and not just an issue from 40 to 50 years ago,” said Duncan. Continue reading →

Poor people run out of food at the end of the month. No mystery about it: when you run out of money, you run out of food. Every mother struggling to stretch food stamps knows it, and so does every food shelf manager. Continue reading →

I just signed up for another MOOC. So far, I’m batting .500, completing one MOOC and withdrawing from a second. That puts me way ahead of the average, since the average completion rate is only four percent, according to one recent study. Continue reading →

(Photo from Scott Sonnen Facebook post)

Suspended coffee? The Facebook post looked intriguing – looking it up made it even better. Continue reading →