Researchers from three Canadian universities claim that the popular gym class game dodgeball is a tool for certain students to oppress their peers. This isn’t the first time you have heard this. People have been talking about dodgeball for a while. There are two camps: (1) the sissification of American…
Does summer vacation affect children’s overall academic performance? National Summer Learning Association argues that by 9th grade, two-thirds of the achievement gap between low and middle-income children is due to summer learning loss. I’ve been hearing these types of arguments forever and have pretty much accepted them as fact. In part…
Kindergarten used to be a place where you really honed in on your napping and fingerpainting skills. No longer. My youngest son graduated from kindergarten a few weeks ago. The academic requirements of a kindergartener in 2019 are significantly greater than those placed on my 13-year-old son when he was in…
I look so hard for these on-line. Annoying, North Carolina has some that you can’t print out. So you can put them on line but you take off the print function. I would love to see the meeting where that was decided. Anyway, I discovered today that the great state…
There has been a lot of debate of late about whether college is for everyone. Robert Samuelson, a noted economist, wrote a editorial in the Washington Post a few weeks ago arguing that the ” college-for-all crusade” is one of those utopia dreams that should come to an end for…
If you read the popular books on success, almost all of the authors refer back to Carol Dweck’s work. She is clearly a titan researcher so when I found out she had written her own book, “Mindset”, I was giddy. Why not get it straight from the horse’s mouth? Her premise…
Effort to Teach Kids Practical Financial Skills What is the biggest criticism of our schools today? Okay… that is too big of a bear to tackle… what is one of the biggest criticisms about our schools today? The failure to teach real life skills you need to be successful not…
Some people are moved by love, beauty, and justice. Some people are moved by money. If you are the latter, this post is for you. According to a new study, “Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?” by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, our inability to compete…
Historically, there has not been a lot of honest assessment about the quality of our school teachers in Maryland. It is too sensitive, too subjective, etc. But times are changing. Why? Because kids in too many other countries – China comes to mind – are outperforming us by whopping margins.…
What is the capital of South Sudan? I was excited to teach my kids this week the birth of a new country, South Sudan. The capital is Juda. Tonight, we are going to try to handwrite in on our maps the border between Sudan and South Sudan. (Hopefully, with a…