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Consisting of members from parent and family organizations across the country, the council will help families understand their rights, create a feedback loop with schools to shape how American Rescue Plan funds are used, and identify summer learning and enrichment opportunities for children, according to a news release.

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Elections are all about numbers, sometimes hinging on miniscule percentage-point differences in turnouts. Math teacher Alison Strole’s middle school students know this better than your average American, because they’ve actually had to wrestle with the data.

Strole, who teaches in the Hamilton Southeastern district in Fishers, Ind., requires students to analyze 20 years of exit-poll results—including the 2008 and 2016 presidential elections, where swing states twice reshaped the national balance of political power. Officially, this is part of her math unit on data analysis and how to read and interpret two-way data tables, part of 7th and 8th grade algebra. In practice it’s also a powerful civics lesson.

Read more from Education Week, Volume 39, Issue 16, Pages 1, 12 , November 26, 2019:  https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/11/26/math-the-most-powerful-civics-lesson-youve.html

Photos by Daryl Peveto for Education Week
Warning: this article contains racist and offensive language.

Swastikas on bathroom stalls. Chants of ‘Build the wall.’ Notes that say ‘Go back to Mexico.’ Education Week found hundreds of reports of hate and bias in schools.

Newtown, Pa. – Three swastikas were scrawled on the note found in the girls’ restroom, along with a homophobic comment and a declaration: “I Love Trump.” Found inside the backpack of Latina student, a note that said: Go back to Mexico. Two other hate-filled incidents—invoking Donald Trump’s name and using swastikas—were also reported that same day. The school: Council Rock High in this mostly white, affluent Philadelphia suburb. The day: Nov. 9, 2016, the day after the election of President Trump. Council Rock school district Superintendent Robert Fraser condemned the incidents, but told parents he believed they were isolated events. The acts, he wrote in a letter on Nov. 10, were “inappropriate” and would not be tolerated. But, he emphasized, they were “likely the responsibility of a very small number of individuals whose actions should not damage the reputation of the larger group.” Soon after, the district formed a council on diversity, mostly composed of parents, and took several other steps, including training for school staff to better identify and respond to hate incidents. Despite those efforts, Council Rock High, said some parents and students, continues to have a culture where racist views are sometimes boldly expressed, but oftentimes ferment under the surface. The hate-fueled incidents at Council Rock in the wake of the divisive 2016 presidential election, and the school’s rocky path to addressing them, are not unusual.

Even as high-profile hate crimes and bias incidents grab national attention, it’s difficult to quantify how many occur in broader society, including those that take place inside the nation’s schools.

Concerns about a rise in hate crimes and bias incidents have surged since the campaign and election of President Trump, who has frequently used coarse language and racist rhetoric when describing immigrants, people of color, and women. In schools, similar worries are echoed by some students, parents, and educators who suggest that Trump’s influence has emboldened some children, teenagers, and even school employees to openly espouse hateful views.

To understand how hate, intolerance, and bias are affecting school climate and impacting students and their educators, Education Week partnered with the nonprofit news organization ProPublica in a project called Documenting Hate. We analyzed three years of media reports and self-reported incidents of hate and bias in K-12 school settings—many submitted to ProPublica.

In a review of 472 verified accounts, we found that most incidents that took place in schools between January 2015 and December 2017 targeted black and Latino students, as well as those who are Jewish or Muslim.

Read more: https://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/hate-in-schools.html

The notion that teachers only improve in their first three years is deeply ingrained in K-12 policy discussions, but two new studies suggest teaching effectiveness increases for at least the first decade, reports Stephen Sawchuck for Education Week. Pinning down the connection between a teacher’s experience and effectiveness has been methodologically challenging, because of difficulties in comparing student cohorts taught by teachers with different training and backgrounds. Cross-sectional comparisons have found few performance differences between early- and later-career teachers. However, a forthcoming study in the Journal of Public Economics looks at 200,000 student test scores linked to 3,500 teachers from an unnamed urban district, analyzing those data through three methods that each rely on different baseline assumptions about capturing growth in teacher effectiveness. Under all three, researchers found teachers’ capacity to boost student achievement grew well beyond the three- to five-year mark. A different paper by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research analyzed records from 1.2 million students in North Carolina from 2007-2011, including absences, disciplinary offenses, and test scores. Researchers found teachers gained in effectiveness for at least 12 years, and as they gained experience, were linked to lower rates of student absenteeism. Both studies portray teacher effectiveness as a mutable characteristic that develops, rather than a static one formed the first few years teaching.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/03/25/new-studies-find-that-for-teachers-experience.html

A report in Education Week shows that Pennsylvania ranks a disturbing 48th in the nation when it comes to the gap between the share of poor and non-poor children enrolled in preschool.

Public Citizens for Children and Youth, in an article on the report, said that while Pennsylvania is in the middle of the pack in terms of preschool enrollment, children in families that make more than $100,000 annually are 60 percent more likely to be enrolled in preschool than poor children in families with an income of $50,000 or less.

PCCY said that the report also shows that less than half of Pennsylvania children who qualify for Head Start are enrolled because there is far too little federal and state funding for the program.

To read the full report, go here.

http://www.edweek.org/media/ew/qc/2015/shr/16shr.pa.h34.pdf

Several recent studies question the efficacy of STEM-focused schools, writes Holly Yettick for Education Week. A report in The Journal of Educational Research indicated that students in STEM schools in North Carolina were significantly more likely to take core, advanced, and vocational-technical STEM courses than peers in other schools; however, in Florida, STEM students took vocational-technical STEM courses at higher rates, but took core and advanced STEM courses at the same rate as peers in non-STEM schools. Students in STEM-focused schools in both Florida and North Carolina were no more likely to perform well on state math exams between 2006 and 2008. Another report in the same journal looked specifically at STEM-focused elementary and middle schools, finding results mixed. Transferring to STEM magnets didn’t change achievement trajectories; students performed at the same levels as peers who transferred to non-STEM schools in the same district. Still another study examined math, biology, chemistry, and physics course-taking and exam results for 70,000 students attending both selective and nonselective public STEM high schools in New York City. The STEM schools appeared at first glance to have higher scores and STEM course-taking rates than other high schools, but once researchers accounted for demographics and prior test scores, most STEM-school advantages disappeared, suggesting they were disproportionately attracting higher-achieving students interested in STEM.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2014/06/stem_schools.html