| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Star Ledger--District said town was overcrowding its schools. A judge disagreed.
A state judge has dismissed one local Board of Education’s lawsuit against its own township’s Zoning Board, citing a lack of legal standing.
State Superior Court Judge James Hurley dismissed the Edison Board of Education’s lawsuit of an “overcrowding crisis” against the township zoning board on July 31, ruling that the district failed to offer evidence to support its claims.
Brianna Kudisch | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com| Posted Aug 12, 8:00 AM
The Atlantic--When ‘Back to School’ Means Back to Mass-Shooting Fears
High-profile massacres have created ambient, worsening anxiety about gun violence on K–12 campuses.
Phyllis Fagell, a counselor at the private K–8 Sheridan School in Washington, D.C., got an email from a colleague on Sunday that’s been on her mind ever since. The email itself didn’t contain any distressing information. It didn’t tell of a sick relative or a friend in need. It was a promotion for a new active-shooter training course at a nearby gym.
What struck Fagell was in large part the email’s timing: The message arrived at the end of a particularly deadly weekend that included two high-profile shootings—and just a few weeks ahead of the new school year. “There’s something wrong,” Fagel said, “when I’m getting an email offering a free course … learning how to pack wounds and apply a tourniquet.”
Alia Wong| Aug 9, 2019
Education Week--How Should Schools Respond to ICE Raids? Some Advice
In the wake of the largest U.S. immigration raid in a decade, educators in Mississippi this week were left to console and support children with detained parents.
Now, school administrators and other educators across the country face the prospect that workplace raids could happen in their districts—and must address the fear and uncertainty that is likely gripping millions of their students.
Corey Mitchell on August 9, 2019 4:59 PM
Chalkbeat--N.J. put two troubled Newark charter schools on probation, citing academic and safety concerns
New Jersey has put two struggling Newark charter schools on probation, a rare sanction that could lead to closure if the schools do not make swift improvements.
The two schools, University Heights Charter School and M.E.T.S. Charter School, together serve nearly 1,000 Newark students and were ordered to create plans to address the low test scores and chaotic classrooms that state officials found.
Patrick Wall| August 13, 2019
Education Dive--Study links positive messages about middle school to better grades, behavior
Sixth-grade writing and reflecting exercises that communicate how it’s normal for new middle schoolers to be anxious and worry they don’t fit in — and that these feelings are temporary — can contribute to better attendance, behavior and academic performance, according to a new study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Linda Jacobson @lrj417| Published Aug. 12, 2019
Edutopia--Is It Time to Detrack Math?
Districts are moving to end the practice of tracking as research suggests that it may deepen educational inequities—with little benefit for students’ academic performance.
Two years ago, Julie Ward, the math curriculum coordinator for Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts, took a look at test scores for the district’s eighth graders from the previous school year: 70 percent of white students had passed the state math tests while only 10 percent of black students had. Digging deeper into the data, she found that the numbers were part of a pattern that was consistent year to year.
https://www.edutopia.org/article/it-time-detrack-math
Carly Berwick| August 9, 2019
The Hechinger Report--OPINION: Do our divided schools look like a scene out of ‘Mean Girls’ — or a slide into white nationalism?
Students report that they 'want more hard conversations in class'
You could say that summer is over.
This month’s horrific shootings shocked many to the core, but the current generation of students has always known that gun violence is real. They have always seen our country divided into “us” and “them.”
Jennifer Rich| August 13, 2019
