Category: Updates

There is a gap in education between the knowledge of prevention and the act of prevention. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics early universal screening for the risk of learning disabilities leads to better intervention, improved student performance throughout her or his education career, and less money invested in IEPs. Yet, we do not embrace universal testing in our K-12 education system. Today’s interview with Dr. Vincent Alfonso, dean the School of Education at Gonzaga University, dives into the world of early childhood development testing, why we do and do not test more, what can be done in your school to help support your special education program and opportunities to improve your processes.  READ MORE

Jennifer Ruef, a contributor for The Conversation, writes: “I teach people how to teach math, and I’ve been working in this field for 30 years. Across those decades, I’ve met many people who suffer from varying degrees of math trauma — a form of debilitating mental shutdown when it comes to doing mathematics. When people share their stories with me, there are common themes. These include someone telling them they were ‘not good at math,’ panicking over timed math tests, or getting stuck on some math topic and struggling to move past it. The topics can be as broad as fractions or an entire class, such as Algebra or Geometry.”  READ MORE

For an elementary school teacher who works with economically disadvantaged students, it can be discouraging to hear phrases like “significant achievement gap” or “30-million-word gap” in discussions of the reading and vocabulary development of our students. But research does bear those phrases out: There are clear trends of underachievement in academics for students of low socioeconomic status.  READ MORE

In a school or district, as in any organization, the leader is responsible for setting the tone, and one way leaders can nourish organizational harmony is to consider three spaces: the physical, the interpersonal and the historical. Only by balancing these three spaces will leaders cultivate the influence that permeates an entire organizational culture, and only by attending to these critical human needs will leaders experience the deep happiness that keeps them engaged and attentive for the long haul.  READ MORE

After months of suspense, the results of the midterm elections — arguably some of the most important the nation has seen in years — are in. The stakes are high, with voters weighing in on issues like healthcare, immigration and President Donald Trump’s controversial tenure. Among the top issues this election cycle is education, and this year, educators took matters into their own hands by running for public office.  READ MORE

The day after the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Texas for spending tens of millions of dollars less than it was supposed to on kids with disabilities in 2012, advocates have dug up documents appearing to show Texas did the same thing in 2017 — raising the prospect it could get hit with even more penalties. For months, Texas has battled with the U.S. Department of Education over how to interpret a 1997 federal statute prohibiting states from reducing their funding for kids with disabilities from year to year.  READ MORE

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team have created a guide to help parents make better sense of the maze of data that states are required to put in their new report cards under the Every Student Succeeds Act. You can check it out here. DeVos previously put out a “Parent’s Guide” to the law itself. “Parents deserve to know what is happening in their child’s school,” DeVos said in a statement. “They should not have to parse through a 500-page legal document to understand how a law or policy affects their children’s education.  READ MORE

In October 2015, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said if he was elected president, he would consider eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. While that hasn’t happened since he took office in January 2017, his administration has gutted or changed much of the Obama-era policies and guidelines that previously defined the K-12 sphere, and more changes seem to be on the way. Here’s a running list of pieces of Obama-era K-12 education policy dismantled under Trump, along with those at risk of being severed next.  READ MORE

For many teens diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD), the transition to college is a bridge too far. About 9 percent of students with ADHD graduate from college, compared to 60 percent of students without the condition.  READ MORE

Heavily decorated classrooms can bombard students with too much visual information, interfering with their memory and ability to focus, a new study finds. This is just the latest study to examine the relationship between classroom environment and students’ executive functions, which include skills like memory, attention, and self-regulation. While teachers have good intentions when decorating, many classrooms end up being “sensory-rich” in a way that “could hamper children’s learning gains rather than help,” according to psychologists Pedro Rodrigues and Josefa Pandeirada, who coauthored the study.  READ MORE