“We are not isolated in our common concerns regarding student learning in light of the COVID pandemic, and it has been a great resource to find solutions to common problems shared by fellow educators.” edWeb is a professional learning network that provides teachers...
The Tonasket School District (WA) experienced two student suicides in the last three months, surprising everyone. Steve McCullough, the district superintendent, described the students as active in high school and great athletes with bright futures. Nobody thought they had any problems.
According to a CoSN report, more than half of school districts and about one-third of public schools in the United States are in rural areas. Rural communities have unique challenges, ranging from poverty and vast travel distances to a lack of affordable internet access.
When something dramatic happens, like releasing student achievement scores, there’s often an outcry over educational inequities, and there are statements and calls to action to do better. Most of the time, though, the initial energy dissipates, and nothing changes. During an edWebinar hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association and AASA’s Leadership Network, John Krownapple and Floyd Cobb, Ph.D., authors of Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity: The Keys to Successful Equity Implementation, discussed why belonging and dignity are just as important as access and opportunity when it comes to educational equity.
If your students struggle with math—or don’t like it very much—singing (and some dancing) might cure their distress. Music is a bonafide learning medium that helps students grasp and remember information and, it turns out, successfully imparts mathematical thinking.
What are some of the things that helped us survive the past year with the coronavirus? At the Education Research & Development Institute (ERDI) conference in Chicago in July, we hosted a Women’s Fellowship Breakfast for 50 women leaders in education, mostly school district administrators, plus education industry leaders. We spent time reflecting on the things that helped us get through this past year of chaos and crisis. Some of us were gathering in person for the first time in a very long time, and the mood was joyful and thankful, and that was reflected in comments we gathered from the guests.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and, in many ways, worsened the digital divide and other inequitable aspects of America’s education system. However, it also created opportunities to develop more equitable outcomes, based on the widespread switch to digital learning experiences and new education models.
In a recent edWebinar, sponsored by Scholastic Digital Solutions, the presenters discussed the reality of racial violence and inequity that students of color face and what we as educators and administrators can do to confront it rather than perpetuate it. They identified racial violence as violence incurred by students of color that can be overt and covert, taken for granted, an act of invisibilization, or the erasure of students’ identities and realities.
Billions of dollars in federal relief funding for schools and districts have become available during the coronavirus pandemic, but with limited time available before application deadlines arrive, there is an urgent need to understand the funding requirements and process, and also to determine how the funds can best be used to provide improvements for local students and staff.
Education is just different than it was pre-pandemic—many school leaders think it shouldn’t go back to the way it was before when schools used systems developed in the 20th century. But that doesn’t mean even more changes aren’t needed. In a recent edWebinar, hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association and AASA’s Leadership Network, the presenters discussed the findings of the AASA Learning 2025 National Commission and the need to get more students engaged in their own educational experience.