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Why it matters that Americans are comparatively bad at math
by JON MARCUS September 26, 2023 Employers, experts raise new alarms about competitiveness and national security Like a lot of high school students, Kevin Tran loves superheroes, though perhaps for different reasons than his classmates. “They’re all insanely smart. In their regular jobs they’re engineers, they’re scientists,” said Tran, who is 17. “And you can’t do any of those things without math.” Tran also loves math. He was speaking during a break in a Boston city program for promising local high school students to study calculus for five hours a day throughout the summer at Northeastern University. And his observation was surprisingly apt. At a time when Americans joke about how bad…
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How the ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ Fable Reveals the Folly of Student Loan Forgiveness
Michael Heberling Michael Heberling is the Chair of Leadership Studies in the Baker College MBA program in Flint, Michigan. Prior to this, he was President of Baker’s Center for Graduate Studies for 16 years. Before Baker, Dr. Heberling was a Senior Policy & Business Analyst with the Anteon Corporation. He also had a career in the Air Force retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. Dr. Heberling has over 75 business and public policy publications. His research interests focus on leadership, military history and the impact of public policy on the business community. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network
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Why grammar mistakes in a short email could make some people judge you
Julie Boland, Robin Queen I’m a cognitive psychologist who studies language comprehension. If I see an ad for a vacation rental that says “Your going to Hollywood!” it really bugs me. But my collaborator, Robin Queen, a sociolinguist, who studies how language use varies across social groups, is not annoyed by those errors at all. We were curious: what makes our reactions so different? We didn’t think the difference was due to our professional specialties. So we did some research to find out what makes some people more sensitive to writing mistakes than others. What prior research tells us Writing errors often appear in text messages, emails, web posts and other types…
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Why grammar mistakes in a short email could make some people judge you Julie Boland, Robin Queen I’m a cognitive psychologist who studies language comprehension. If I see an ad for a vacation rental that says “Your going to Hollywood!” it really bugs me. But my collaborator, Robin Queen, a sociolinguist, who studies how language use varies across social groups, is not annoyed by those errors at all. We were curious: what makes our reactions so different? We didn’t think the difference was due to our professional specialties. So we did some research to find out what makes some people more sensitive to writing mistakes than others. What prior research tells us Writing…
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A Teachers Union Shaped CDC School Guidance. Is That a Problem?
The influence of the union has prompted debate over its role in scientific decision making. BY HANNAH THOMASY June 10, 2021 WHEN THE U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued much-anticipated guidelines for school reopening in February, some critics argued that the nation’s premier health agency had set unreasonably strict standards for schools to follow. But the two largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, long hesitant about reopening schools amid the Covid-19 pandemic, rallied in support of the document. “For the first time since the start of this pandemic, we have a rigorous road map, based on science, that our members can…
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Held Back: Inside a Lost School Year
Thompson converted her daughters’ bedroom into a teaching space. Credit:Cydni Elledge, special to ProPublica Elledge, special to ProPublica Teacher Ashlee Thompson had a lot to worry about this year: A deadly virus. A poor district under threat by the state. And now, a new mandate for her students: Learn to read or flunk the third grade. Editor’s note: ProPublica obtained parents’ consent to feature their children in this story. Ashlee Thompson turned on her camera. At the other end of the screen one morning last September was a third grader she’d never taught. To assess his reading, Thompson showed the boy a string of letters. S B C He made a…
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The Federal Government Gave Billions to America’s Schools for COVID-19 Relief. Where Did the Money Go?
The Education Department’s limited tracking of $190 billion in pandemic support funds sent to schools has left officials in the dark about how effective the aid has been in helping students. After the pandemic shut down schools across the country, the federal government provided about $190 billion in aid to help them reopen and respond to the effects of the pandemic. In the year and a half since millions of children were sent home, the Education Department has done only limited tracking of how the money has been spent. That has left officials in Washington largely in the dark about how effective the aid has been in helping students, especially those whose…
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How Back-to-School Shopping Is Like Modern Politics
Gary M. Galles August 21, 2019 As 2019’s campaign unpleasantness has accelerated (OMG—there’s still way over a year to go), many Americans have been going through another sometimes-unpleasant experience: back-to-school shopping. Seemingly overlooked, however, is that the frequent parent-child conflict of back-to-school shopping illustrates why politics expands Americans’ disunity. Parents and Children Have Different Values Parents and children value back to school items differently. And the difference is often large. That is because parents’ more practical considerations can be way out of line with children’s “where will this put me on the social pecking order at school?” concerns. And when their valuations differ substantially, requiring them to make decisions jointly…
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How recess helps students learn
Published: February 14, 2022 3.03pm EST Author William Massey Assistant Professor of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University As parents and schools seek to support students’ social and emotional needs – and teach them what they need to learn – some education leaders are missing one particularly effective opportunity. The U.S. Department of Education has offered guidance on how to help students navigate the stress and trauma of the pandemic and readjust to in-person schooling after long periods of closed schools. But as someone who studies recess in connection with child development, I couldn’t help but notice recess was missing from the federal guidance and from many local…
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Kids’ access to recess varies greatly
On any given day, young children have their recess taken away for academic or behavioral reasons and must stay inside, walk laps or sit on a sidewalk and watch their friends play.
