Why Reopening Schools Requires Major Caution

A new analysis stresses the need for caution when when reopening America’s schools.

The University of Cambridge has announced that all lectures will be offered online for the academic year beginning in October 2020.

As students start university, failure is probably the last thing they want to think about. But university failure is depressingly common.

Policymakers and presidential hopefuls are having a spirited debate over whether the U.S. should offer free community college, free public college in general or additional college subsidies directed at low-income students.

The disastrous experience of vocational education and training in Australia holds many lessons about trying to fit education into a for-profit market model

Cincinnati Christian College is one of a growing number of colleges and universities – 21 private colleges since 2016 – forced to close their doors for financial reasons. The trend has affected the public sector, too. At least 33 public colleges – including community colleges – have consolidated within their state systems or merged with other institutions since 2016.

The factory model of education is outdated, so what's next? - Conventional schooling was largely designed with an industrial-revolution mindset.

Early childhood education programs can benefit life outcomes in ways that span generations, new research shows.

Recently, the Ontario government proposed educational reforms that collectively amount to savings of almost $1 billion, according to an analysis by the charity People for Education.

While critics charge that charter schools are siphoning money away from public schools, a more fundamental issue frequently flies under the radar: the questionable business practices that allow people who own and run charter schools to make large profits.

Teacher strikes swept the United States in 2018, from West Virginia to Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina and beyond.

Canadians continue to grapple with what it means to be an inclusive society. Despite a general trend to inclusive education in provinces across Canada, policies and services are inconsistent.

The classroom is bright with enough room for 26 kindergarten kids to move around their stations of discovery.

Scandal has thrust the troubling inequality of higher education in the U.S. into the spotlight. News media have highlighted how big money donations, sports scholarships, SAT tests and admission consultants can help people game the elite admission system in both legal and illegal ways.

When school officials suspend students, the idea is to maintain a safe environment and deter violence and other problematic behavior on the school campus.

Kelsey Hrubes knew she had a challenge on her hands when she visited Germany as a study abroad student back in 2015. “I was forced to adapt to cultural norms I had never considered before and try to comprehend everything in a new language,” recalls Hrubes, a software engineer at Microsoft and 2017 Iowa State graduate in German and computer science.

A college education has many funders. Federal and state governments provide support, as do the institutions of higher education themselves. And then, of course, there is the money paid by the students’ families. Improving access will require additional support from one or more of these sources.

High student debt levels and low salaries can make it difficult for graduates to get ahead. Even though for-profit colleges get a bad rap for being predatory and leaving students saddled with debt but no degree, a significant number of private nonprofit and public colleges have the same issues.

The past several years have seen increased calls for colleges and universities to demonstrate their value to students, families and taxpayers.

Following the success of the West Virginia teachers strike earlier this year that led to a 5 percent pay raise, teachers throughout the nation are rising to demand better conditions and better pay.

It is understood that childrens’ emotions in school are connected to their learning and academic achievement.

Each year in the United States, approximately 5 to 7.5 million students in the nation’s K-12 schools miss a month or more of school. That means 150 to 225 million instructional days are lost every school year.

A new study out today has found increasing education by 3.6 years – similar to the length of a university undergraduate degree

Tests that purport to measure your intelligence can be verbal, meaning written, or non-verbal, focusing on abstract reasoning independent of reading and writing skills. 

With school starting, parents wonder what they can do to help their children succeed. Almost everyone knows that reading books with young children is important, and it is.

Children’s oral vocabulary – their knowledge of the sounds and meanings of words – is strongly positively associated with their reading all the way through school.

Every year, policymakers across the U.S. make life-changing decisions based on the results of standardized tests. These high-stakes decisions include, but are not limited to, student promotion to the next grade level, student eligibility to participate in advanced coursework, eligibility to graduate high school and teacher tenure.

After states suffer significant job losses, college attendance drops among the poorest students of the next generation, a new study suggests.

One in eight Australians will never get Year 12 qualifications. Some, but not all of these people, make up the one in eight Australians who will be disengaged from full-time work, study or training for most of their lives.

There is little doubt that the challenging, turbulent and uncertain times faced by the UK’s university sector in 2016 are set to continue well into 2017

In 2001, Texas-based energy giant Enron shocked the world by declaring bankruptcy. Thousands of employees lost their jobs, and investors lost billions.

President Donald Trump has directed the United States Department of Education to evaluate whether the federal government has “overstepped its legal authority” in the field of education. This is not a new issue in American politics.

Coca-Cola and Nestlé have recently closed facilities, and Starbucks is bracing for a global shortage of coffee – all due to effects from climate change.

Teachers don’t just leave their jobs because of low pay and retirement, new research shows. Their perceptions of a broken education system also contribute.

When my father-in-law struggled in school in a mill town along the Ohio River, his parents suggested that he head across the bridge and work in the steel mill. It was a path that once created stable lives for many Pittsburghers.

Proponents of “school choice” say that voucher programs—which allow parents to use state education funds to enroll their children in private schools

It’s often thought that it is better to start learning a second language at a young age. But research shows that this is not necessarily true.

Surveys of the key skills employers seek in graduates continue to place so-called “soft skills” – like verbal and written communication skills, the ability to work collaboratively in teams and to influence others

Quality teaching is one of the largest influences on student learning. Yet, not all students have access to a great teacher.

There is a major flaw in the way we currently assess school students. By labelling them as either “good” or “poor” learners based on their overall grades at the end of each year, students have no clear idea whether they are making progress over extended periods of time.

After President-elect Donald Trump tapped Betsy DeVos to become the head of the United States Department of Education, her name has spurred a great deal of conversation within the K-12 education community.

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recently pledged to make undergraduate education at the the City University of New York (CUNY) and the State University of New York (SUNY) system free for families making less than US$120,000 annually.

'Our job is to encourage every person in this country to get all of the education they can, not to punish them for getting that education,' Sanders says in New York

The increasing cost of higher education and the resultant impact on student debt has received wide attention. Providing free tuition and reducing student debt were among the key proposals of the presidential nominees.

What President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican sweep of government will mean for K-12 education priorities over the next four years is not entirely clear yet.

Children who do not learn to read in the first few years of schooling are typically destined to a school career of educational failure, because reading underpins almost all subsequent learning.

Most of us know the difference a good teacher makes in the life of a child. Many global institutions working to improve access to education, such as the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and Education International agree that “teacher quality” is the critical element in whether or not an educational system succeeds.

Tania Morales de la Cruz, a professor of education at Cuba’s University of Matanzas, recently visited South Africa for the first time.

In health there are well-established protocols that govern the introduction of any new drug or treatment. Of major consideration is the notion of doing no harm.

As children head back to school, an increasing number of their homeschooled peers will be starting their academic year as well. Homeschooling in the United States is growing at a strong pace.

There’s new evidence that standing desks in classrooms can slow the increase in elementary school children’s body mass index (BMI)—a key indicator of obesity—by an average of 5.24 percentile points.

More and more adults are going back to school to learn new skills. The National Center for Education Statistics data show a 7 percent growth in college enrollment for adults over the age of 24 between 2005 and 2015. This is projected to increase to 12 percent by 2019.

Documents released in a federal lawsuit against Trump University have put presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the defensive. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is now highlighting the fraud that is at the center of the case.

The arrival of summer generates excitement. But it could also bring challenges for both parents and educators. Many students experience a loss in math learning during the summer months known commonly as “summer slide.”

Recent debates about China have focused on its role in the gradual eastward shift in the global economy. This process was accentuated by the financial crisis of 2007-08 and ensuing recession in the West.

Any election demands knowledge, attention and wisdom from the whole electorate. When a campaign season does not seem to be going well, there’s often angst about whether the public has been sufficiently educated.

"The socioeconomic profile of a district is a powerful predictor of the average test score performance of students in that district," says Sean Reardon. "Nonetheless, poverty is not destiny: There are districts with similarly low-income student populations where academic performance is higher than others."

Classrooms are becoming more diverse. So, why is music education focused on Western music?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg believes personalised learning is the answer to many of education’s current woes, and is one of the four key areas that he and his wife Prescilla Chan’s US$45 billion Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will fund.

In a growing number of school districts across the nation, students must wear a uniform. This is not the stereotypical school uniform associated with Catholic schools – pleated plaid skirt with a blouse for girls; a button-down shirt, a necktie and dark pants for boys. Instead, these are mostly khaki and blue or khaki and red shirt/blouse and skirt/pants uniforms.

Rewarding teachers financially for student achievement is an increasingly common practice, despite mixed evidence as to whether it improves results. Some scholars have instead suggested paying students.

Studies have long shown that a college student’s odds of achieving financial security and a better quality of life improve when he or she earns a degree. But what are some of the obstacles that prevent degree attainment?

Can’t remember the name of the two elements that scientist Marie Curie discovered? Or who won the 1945 UK general election? Or how many light years away the sun is from the earth? Ask Google.

“Opt Out,” a civil disobedience movement against state-mandated testing in elementary and secondary education, is growing rapidly across the United States. Last year, Opt Out protests occurred in about half the states. This year, the movement has found support across all 50 states.

I know a high school senior who’s so worried about whether she’ll be accepted at the college of her choice she can’t sleep. The parent of another senior tells me he stands at the mailbox for an hour every day waiting for a hoped-for acceptance letter to arrive.

More schooling and harder problems may be the best explanation for the dramatic rise in IQ scores—often referred to as the Flynn Effect—during the past century, a new study reports.

At a time when mounting student debt is dominating news, students across America are leaving nearly $3 billion in federal financial aid on the table each year. That this happens is often simply because a potential student doesn’t fill out the FAFSA, (free application for federal student aid) form, that funds aren’t dispensed.

Often seen in art and business, hybrid solutions are gaining increased attention in education. In the classroom, the blend of traditional and new teaching methods, and the mix of online and face-to-face learning – known as the “hybrid classroom” – is posing profound questions about the lessons of the future.

Nestled in the woods of central Minnesota, near a large lake, is a nature sanctuary called the Audubon Center of the North Woods. The nonprofit rehabilitates birds. It hosts retreats and conferences. It's home to a North American porcupine named Spike as well as several birds of prey, frogs, and snakes used to educate the center's visitors.

A new batch of Australian five-year-olds has just started school, eager to learn to read and write. Unfortunately for them, English has one of the most difficult spelling systems of any language, thanks to the way it developed.

Not since the 1960s has a sitting President engaged in issues around higher education as frequently as Barack Obama. He’s had little choice.

There has been much publicity in recent years about China and its teachers. After the most recent results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) were published in 2013, considerable discussion has focused on the reasons why Chinese students’ test results are more than 100 points above the PISA average.

Want to see a public school system in its death throes? Look no further than Philadelphia. There, the school district is facing end times, with teachers, parents and students staring into the abyss created by a state intent on destroying public education. On Thursday the city of Philadelphia announced that it would be borrowing $50 million to give the district, just so it can open schools as planned on Sept. 9

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Janusz Korczak (1878-1942). Korczak was a writer, a medical doctor, a thinker and a radio broadcaster, but he was mainly known as a unique and innovative educator, who founded an orphanage for Jewish children in Warsaw.

A basic economic principle is government ought to tax what we want to discourage, and not tax what we want to encourage.

Many private schools were formed and operated to bridge the gap between public schools that were once the pride of the USA and the desire for pseudo-private schools and public funding.