If you judge by test scores only, my kid attends a pretty good public school.  But at the end of the day, she rarely returns from those hallowed halls of learning excited about anything other than no longer being in those hallowed halls of learning.  She’s a bright and curious girl who used to be excited about school.  But after several years in the public school system, she’s frustrated, exhausted and completely uninspired.

I don’t blame her teachers.  I blame the system. We know it’s broken and our kids are paying the price, but does anyone know how to fix it?

Some award-winning teachers profiled in CNN’s “Fix Our Schools” series think they do. Continue reading »

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When my husband was transferred across the country a few years ago, I was charged with determining where we would live.  Because his new job was within commuting distance of three different states, the task was not an easy one.  In order to narrow things down, I turned to School Matters, a site that provides information about public school’s reading and math scores as well as their student/teacher ratio.

While I obviously wanted a school where the test scores were high, I was just as determined to find one where the class sizes were small.  After all, a smaller class size means a better education, right?

Not necessarily.  According to research, the relationship between class size and student achievement is not as clear cut as you might think. Continue reading »

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Exposure to art makes you smart.

That’s what the prestigious Guggenheim museum will reveal today and tomorrow at their conference, Thinking Like an Artist: Creativity and Problem Solving in the Classroom.

“During this conference, the Guggenheim will present key findings from The Art of Problem Solving, a four-year research initiative that evaluated the impact of its pioneering arts education program Learning Through Art on students’ problem-solving abilities and creativity.”

The study showed - no surprise here – that students involved in the Learning Through Art program “scored higher in three out of the six skills of problem solving.”  They were more flexible, more able to connect ends and aims (the ability to reflect on whether one’s final project met the intended goals), and had greater resource recognition. Continue reading »

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In a move that many claim is nothing short of an attempt to rewrite history, Texas School Board members have approved changes to that state’s K-12 social studies curriculum.  The proposed changes are sweeping and have a decidedly conservative bent that has drawn criticism from those find the content to be historically inaccurate and dismissive of the contributions of minorities.

This week, the Texas School Board members are meeting in Austin for community input and a final vote on the new textbooks.  The outcome of these meetings will likely have an impact far beyond the Lone Star State.  Because Texas is the second-largest textbook buyer in the country, what they approve is often incorporated into the curriculum of other states.

But California isn’t waiting to see what happens at these meetings.  They don’t want these books ending up in the hands of their students are have introduced legislation to prevent that from happening. Continue reading »

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These days, it seems, every where you turn, someone’s either trying to foist their religious beliefs on you or take yours away.  Christians want to put up Christmas trees in city parks and buildings but don’t want to allow Jews, Wiccans, or Seinfeld fans to put up a menorah, Yule log, or Festivus pole.  And the Atheists would rather not see any of it.  Of course, it is important that the government not endorse one religion over the other and one place that the separation of church and state is critical is in the school system.  But what about the separation of church and student?

Continue reading »

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Jody Becker, a writer and mother of two children, is one of the lucky ones. Because they can afford to live where they do, in a wealthy area of Orange County, Calif., her kids get to attend a top-notch public school, basically for free. Sure, even the so-called “blue ribbon” schools have been hit with cutbacks and, yes, even these schools rely on an outside revenue stream to educate the kids.

Because she doesn’t want her kid to be a free-rider, she’ll write the check. But that’s it. She says she won’t be volunteering as class mom.

However! Continue reading »

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