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Whole Children and Strong Communities

January 6, 2017

Bill Raden, Capital & Main

In a sign that California is quickly emerging as the nation’s
progressive conscience-in-exile, a new Los Angeles education-reform
group has launched an ambitious initiative that it claims could close
historic student achievement gaps in the Los Angeles Unified School
District (LAUSD). Members of Reclaim Our Schools LA (ROS-LA), a
coalition of educators, labor unions and social justice organizations,
told a December media event attended by about one hundred parents,
students and supporters in the library of South L.A.’s Dorsey High
School, that the key to substantive school reform is to transform LAUSD
into a “community school district.” Community schools, which have roots
in the progressive movement of the early 20th century but have been
undergoing a recent revival, look beyond academics to the entrenched,
poverty-related social, emotional and health barriers that keep kids in
high-needs districts from succeeding in school. The approach redresses
those needs by partnering with families, local government and
community-based organizations to provide “wraparound services” — health
clinics, mental health counselors, after-school programs or parent
support services — on school grounds.

 

Kathy Moore and Patty Giggans, EdSource

Young people experiencing dating abuse often live in a world of
isolation, self-doubt and fear that affects every aspect of their lives,
including school. Jessica, a survivor of teen dating abuse, has a story
that is all too common. When Jessica was a sophomore at Fairfield High
School, she began dating a fellow student. She believed that the
intensity of his feelings for her caused his initial jealousy. But that
soon transformed into a pattern of overbearing control. He declared that
no one else existed besides the two of them. He forbade her from
talking to girlfriends and young men. He dictated that she not wear
makeup or skirts. Beginning to feel her independence diminishing,
Jessica became depressed and agonized over how to end a relationship
with someone who said he would commit suicide if she broke up with him.
Not surprisingly, her classroom participation declined. In a class she
and her boyfriend shared, she fell silent and stopped participating in a
group project when he stared at her with threatening disapproval at the
prospect of her interacting with other boys in the group. She felt
humiliated and defeated. One in four youth in the United States
struggles through some form of dating abuse. Nearly half of students who
have experienced dating abuse report that at least part of the abuse
occurred at school. It’s not unusual for a student’s academic
performance to suffer as a result, as it did in Jessica’s case.

 

Esmeralda Bermudez, Los Angeles Times

Nathan Hobbs couldn’t believe his eyes. He rubbed them with his fists,
he blinked, then he looked once more. There it was, just a few days
after Thanksgiving, perched on the branch of a coral tree outside Ms.
Gil’s classroom. Some sort of owl with long legs, white brows and
bright, yellow eyes. Nathan, 9, had no idea how the bird found its way
to the courtyard of his school, Esperanza Elementary, near MacArthur
Park in the middle of the city. “This is a big deal,” he thought. Nathan
told a teacher, who then told Brad Rumble, the school’s principal and a
man who takes bird matters very seriously. Rumble pulled a few students
out of class to observe the visitor, identified as a burrowing
owl. In a neighborhood of asphalt, street vendors and crowded apartment
buildings, this was their closest encounter yet with nature.

 

Nurith Aizenman, NPR

Talking publicly about women’s menstruation has long been a taboo. But
in 2016 the world made big strides getting over the squeamishness. There
was the Chinese swimmer at the Rio Olympics who had no qualms
explaining that she was on her period after she finished a race
grimacing in pain. Some medical students in India launched a “haiku”
contest on menstruation. New York joined the growing number of states
that have ended taxation of tampons and sanitary pads. The new openness
has also sparked a widening conversation about how menstruation might
affect girls in poor countries — their health, their confidence, even
their education. Marni Sommer, a professor at Columbia University, was
among the first social science researchers to look into this topic —
and, for a while, one of the only ones. “When I started doing this in
2004 it was a pretty lonely world,” she says. But not anymore. The work
that she and other pioneers have done suggested that girls are having
difficulty managing their periods — and it could be harming their
education. And that has helped spur a groundswell of interest from
girls’ advocates, policymakers and researchers.

 

December 16, 2016

Emily Deruy, The Atlantic

At first, the playground at Officer Willie Wilkins Park looks pretty
standard. There’s a slide to skid down, ramps to climb up, bridges to
cross, and nooks to investigate. But there’s also something relatively
unusual: words, and lots of them. Mixed in among the bright primary
colors of the structure are white panels plastered with whimsical
illustrations and phrases like “let’s talk about the sunshine” and
“let’s talk about food.” They’re not a random addition; the panels are a
deliberate attempt to foster early language and brain development in
babies and toddlers. The park sits in the eastern part of the city, in a
neighborhood with high poverty rates and low educational attainment.
Studies suggest that a 30-million “word gap” exists between low- and
upper-income children: Poor children hear, understand, and use fewer
words, which can have long-term negative consequences. Babies who hear
fewer words are less likely to do well in school and kids who drop out
of school are less likely to be healthy adults.

 

Bruce D. Perry, Education Week

The most remarkable feature of humankind is the flexibility of our
brains. This neuroplasticity—or the brain’s ability to adjust its
activities in response to new situations—is what has allowed our species
to make dramatic changes from generation to generation. Humans have
evolved from small hunter-gatherer clans to urban, digitally connected,
international communities. The most malleable part of our brain is the
neocortex, which can absorb and store more bits of information than the
brains of any other species. This capacity for cognitive thinking
allowed us to create language, democracy, and thousands of other
inventions. In fact, our most remarkable invention is public education: a
structured system to provide the social and cognitive stimulation
children need to take advantage of their brain’s malleability and
develop knowledge and skills in mathematics, science, and history. By
providing structured cognitive and social experiences, the U.S. public
education system has expressed the potential of millions of children,
which has, in turn, led to invention, creativity, and productivity that
has transformed the world.The key to the success of any educational
experience is the capacity to “get to the cortex.” Yet, each year,
nearly one-third of all children attending U.S. public schools will have
significantly impaired cortical functioning due to abuse, neglect,
domestic violence, poverty, and other adversities. Understanding the
effects of trauma on a child’s brain and how these effects alter the
ability to learn is essential to improving our public education system.

 

Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post; Alfie Kohn, author of Schooling Beyond Measure

When students are rated with letter or number grades, research shows
they’re apt to think in a shallower fashion — and to lose interest in
what they’re learning — as compared with students who aren’t graded at
all. Alternative methods for reporting student progress are not only
less destructive but also potentially more informative. Given the
absence of pros to balance the cons, then, you have to wonder why grades
persist. The only explanation that seems even halfway persuasive is the
fear that kids won’t get into college if they aren’t tagged with a GPA.
But of course that doesn’t explain why grades would be used in middle
school (or, heaven help us, elementary school), where students’
performance is of no interest to colleges.[1] Moreover, some (public and
private) high schools do not give any grades at all, and their
graduates are regularly accepted by both large state universities and
small, selective colleges.

 

December 9, 2016

Greg Allen, NPR

Every December, Miami’s annual Art Basel fair draws artists, dealers and
buyers from around the world. This year, dozens of artists could be
found not in galleries or at cocktail parties, but painting at an
elementary school. Spanish painter Marina Capdevila was one of more than
30 artists working at Eneida Hartner Elementary School in Miami’s
Wynwood neighborhood. Her cartoon-style painting of elderly women doing
water aerobics is intended, she says, to get the kids to smile. “Always
I’m trying to, when I do murals, to bring a little of my sense of humor
to make people laugh,” she says. Over the last decade, Miami’s Wynwood
neighborhood has been revitalized by art. Galleries, restaurants and
artists’ studios have moved in. Walls throughout the area are now
covered in murals and Wynwood has become a tourist destination. Now,
Eneida Hartner Elementary is getting in on the action.

 

Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post

If you have paid attention to the school reform debate in recent years,
you would be forgiven for thinking that public schools across the board
are failing students and that schools that are struggling can only
improve if they fire all of their staff, become a charter school or let
the state take them over. It’s just not so. This is clear in a project
called the Schools of Opportunity, launched a few years ago by educators
who sought to highlight public high schools that actively seek to close
opportunity gaps through 11 research-proven practices and not
standardized test scores (which are more a measure of socioeconomic
status than anything else). The project assesses how well schools
provide health and psychological support for students, judicious and
fair discipline policies, high-quality teacher mentoring programs,
outreach to the community, effective student and faculty support
systems, and broad and enriched curriculum. Schools submit applications
explaining why they believe their school should be recognized.

 

Ruth Berkowitz, Hadass Moore, Ron Avi Astor, and Rami Benbenishty, Review of Educational Research

Educational researchers and practitioners assert that supportive school
and classroom climates can positively influence the academic outcomes of
students, thus potentially reducing academic achievement gaps between
students and schools of different socioeconomic status (SES)
backgrounds. Nonetheless, scientific evidence establishing directional
links and mechanisms between SES, school climate, and academic
performance is inconclusive. This comprehensive review of studies dating
back to the year 2000 examined whether a positive climate can
successfully disrupt the associations between low SES and poor academic
achievement. Positive climate was found to mitigate the negative
contribution of weak SES background on academic achievement; however,
most studies do not provide a basis for deducing a directional influence
and causal relations. Additional research is encouraged to establish
the nature of impact positive climate has on academic achievement and a
multifaceted body of knowledge regarding the multilevel climate
dimensions related to academic achievement.

 

December 2, 2016

Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource

If President-elect Donald Trump were a high school student in
California, he might find himself in a restorative justice circle making
amends for his hurtful words and behavior.

“He would be in a lot of trouble,” said Jaana Juvonen, a UCLA researcher
who studies student bullying. Supported by civil rights laws, brain
science and research on learning, schools in California and across the
nation have increasingly made it a priority to try to create classrooms
that are welcoming to all. The goal is civil discourse, improved
academic performance and fewer discipline incidents. Positive school
climate is part of the idea behind elementary school students shaking
hands with their teachers in the morning, middle school students
creating “No Bullying!” posters and high school students talking it out
in stress management support groups. In California, improving “school
climate” is part of the new education accountability system, although no
one is quite sure what to measure.

Joy Resmovits, Los Angeles Times

Their eyes shift from joy to fatigue as they walk hand in hand and take
in the tents, the smells, the people. The smaller ones tune it out,
faces blank. The eldest openly stare. These are the children of skid
row — black, white, Latino. They have pink and red Adidas sneakers or
thumbs in their mouths or studs that glint like diamonds in their ears
or the first hint of hair above their lips. They’re sisters and friends
who profess their love for each other, who like listening to music when
they study, who talk in class without raising their hands. They could be
any kids.

 

Noah Adams, NPR

The young women in this story have labels. Three labels: Single, mother,
college student. They’re raising a child and getting an education —
three of the 2.6 million unmarried parents attending U.S. colleges and
universities. Getting a degree is hard enough for anyone, but these
students face extra challenges. And when it comes to helping out with
their needs, Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa., is considered one of
the best in the country. It’s a liberal arts school with 1,100 students.
There’s a large farm, an equestrian program, and 15 students in the
Single Parent Scholars program. This year all are moms, though men are
welcome too.

 

November 18, 2016

Alia Wong, The Atlantic
In Florida, a coalition of parents known as “the recess moms” has been
fighting to pass legislation guaranteeing the state’s elementary-school
students at least 20 minutes of daily free play. Similar legislation
recently passed in New Jersey, only to be vetoed by the governor, who
deemed it “stupid.” When, you might ask, did recess become such a
radical proposal? In a survey of school-district administrators, roughly
a third said their districts had reduced outdoor play in the early
2000s. Likely culprits include concerns about bullying
and the No Child Left Behind Act, whose time-consuming requirements
resulted in cuts to play. Disadvantaged kids have been
the most likely to be shortchanged: According to a 2003 study, just 56
percent of children living at or below the poverty line had recess,
compared with 83 percent of those above the poverty line; a similar
disparity was noted between black children and their white peers.

 

Fermin Leal, EdSource
Daniel Chambers’ classes at Banning High School in Los Angeles include
hoisting a heavy water hose around his shoulders and running around the
track, lifting a 20-foot ladder to climb up the sides of buildings, and
dressing in heavy fire coats and other gear within one minute. Chambers,
a sophomore, is one of 70 students from Banning High enrolled in the
campus’ first-ever Fire Academy, a four-year career pathway that will
prepare them for jobs as firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical
technicians. “I’m receiving training I wouldn’t be able to get almost
anywhere else,” Chambers said. The Fire Academy is also part of a new
wave of career training pathways that school districts are creating
to prepare students for very specific jobs. For example, Los Angeles
Unified students can now enroll in pathways such as coding, which was
previously under the computer sciences umbrella; radiology,
formerly part of the healthcare program; or filmmaking, which was part
of the broad multimedia pathway.

 

Gary Warth, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Cal State San Marcos will launch a series of summits, special events and
training sessions aimed at improving literacy through the arts in a new
countywide campaign. The program, called ART=OPPORTUNITY, will be
funded with a $200,000 grant from the Student Foundation and is focused
on providing access to better education for all children and will
include technical assistance to implement arts plans, professional
development, and mentoring. ART=OPPORTUNITY will be implemented by
Merryl Goldberg, executive director of Center ARTES, a university center
dedicated to restoring arts to education. Goldberg, a CSUSM professor
of music, will be joined by a leadership team of arts educators,
professionals and area nonprofits in leading the program.

 

November 11, 2016

Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource

Most of the 3rd-graders in Anita Parameswaran’s class at Daniel Webster
Elementary in San Francisco have had experiences so awful that their
brains won’t let them easily forget. “Whether it be that they’ve been
sexually molested, or they’ve seen domestic violence, or shootings, or
they know somebody who’s passed away,” Parameswaran said, “I would say
every single year about 75 percent, give or take, come in with a lot of
trauma.” Now a national campaign is recognizing, backed by research on
brain development, the power of teachers like Parameswaran to lower the
levels of stress hormones in a child’s body and strengthen the neural
connections needed for learning and self-control. The campaign,
called Changing Minds and launched last month, is a partnership of the
U.S. Department of Justice, the nonprofit group Futures Without
Violence and the Ad Council, a nonprofit agency that creates public
service advertisements.

 

Christine Huard, The San Diego Union-Tribune

More than 1,500 students from every school district in South County
received comprehensive eye exams and picked out a new pair of glasses
last week. Whether because of a lack of access or the cost, some of the
children had never had their vision tested. And for others, it had been
years since they last had their eyes looked at by an optometrist. As
they excitedly waited in line, many had only one thing on their minds.
“Do they have black frames?” 10-year-old Nicolas Mendez asked. “I want
black frames that say ‘Raiders’ on the side.” Two of his classmates from
Ira Harbison Elementary School in National City wanted the same. And
from the look of the dwindling number of color choices available last
Thursday morning at the annual OneSight San Diego clinic, so did a lot
of other kids. “They all want black,” volunteer Brigette Messbarger
said. “And all the kids want big glasses this year.” OneSight is a
nonprofit organization with a mission that reaches around the world.
It’s aim is to unlock each person’s full potential through clear sight.
The National City Host Lions Club has partnered with the organization
for 11 years now to provide eye clinics each November at Camacho Gym in
Las Palmas Park.

 

Lydia Emmanouilidou, NPR

When Patricia Gentile was settling in as the new president of North
Shore Community College in Massachusetts — about twenty miles north of
Boston — she remembers looking out her window and seeing something
strange. “All of these cars rolling up, and tons of folks getting in and
out,” Gentile says, thinking about that January day a couple years ago.
“So I asked my assistant, ‘What’s going on down there?’” Turns out
that’s where students were picked up and dropped off, but Gentile
wondered why there were just so many cars. “And that’s how I found out
that this campus was not accommodated by public transportation.” The
closest option? A bus stop at a mall about four miles away. Once you
arrive there, though, getting the rest of the way is up to you.

 

November 4, 2016

Kat Lonsdorf, NPR
Every day at Weiner Elementary School starts with a dance party, usually to Best Day of My Life by
American Authors — and that’s before the 7:50 a.m. bell even rings.
Then comes the morning assembly, where all 121 students and the staff
gather for 20 minutes in the cafeteria of the school in Weiner, Ark.
They sing songs and learn about an artist, a musician and an
international city of the week. They celebrate birthdays. A lucky
student is crowned Student of the Day. And Pam Hogue makes it her goal
to be an educator instead of a principal. That assembly — and the many
other things this school does to create a sense of community and
happiness — is part of what experts call school climate.

 

Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times
If students in local public schools refused to quench their thirst with
water, would the schools offer them soda instead? Of course not. And if
they won’t drink milk, the answer shouldn’t be to add sugar, chocolate
or artificial strawberry flavoring and coloring to it. L.A. Unified
schools are in a tough position. The only drink they are allowed to
offer students that meets federal school-lunch rules for high-nutrition
foods is milk. Under federal rules, that milk can be sweetened
and flavored. But under a separate L.A. Unified rule, sugar-sweetened
drinks are banned — including flavored milk. So in effect, the only
drink schools can provide to students in their school lunches is plain
milk.

 

Emma Brown, The Washington Post

Approximately 1.8 million U.S. children were home-schooled in 2012, more
than double the number that were home-schooled in 1999, when the
federal government began gathering data on national home-schooling
trends, according to estimates released Tuesday. The estimated number of
home-schooled children represents 3.4 percent of the U.S. student
population between the ages of 5 and 17. The increase was fastest
between 1999 and 2007, then slowed between 2007 and 2012, according to
the estimates from the National Center for Education Statistics.

The figures show that most home-schoolers were white and living above
the poverty line in 2012. An estimated 4 in 10 home-schoolers
had parents who graduated from college, while about 1 in 10 had parents
whose formal education ended before they graduated from high school.

 

October 28, 2016

Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource

Moving away from the no-frills, test-driven approach to education of the
No Child Left Behind era, U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr.
on Friday released guidance about new federal block grants designed to
fund a more varied curriculum, a more positive school environment and a
more integrated use of technology. The newly authorized Student Support
and Academic Enrichment Grants are intended to provide schools the
flexibility to fund programs they feel are most crucial to well-being
and intellectual curiosity of their students. Created under the federal
education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, the grant program
consolidates targeted grants that were used under the previous federal
education law, No Child Left Behind.

 

Moriah Ballingit, The Washington Post

Chuck Rosenberg is the acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement
Administration, a former prosecutor and investigator with more than two
decades of experience. His administration is on the front lines of a
rising opioid abuse epidemic that is projected to kill about 30,000
people in the United States this year. But when it comes to teaching
teenagers about the dangers of opioid abuse — about how the drugs are
killing their peers — he said he realizes that he might not be the best
source.

 

Jonathan F. Zaff and Thomas Malone, Center for Promise

A new brief from the Center for Promise explores whether increasing the
number of adults in a community results in more young people on a
positive path to adult success. While there has been a steady
improvement over the last 40 years in the overall rate of youth leaving
school, researchers have long noted substantial variation by state, city
and neighborhood. Using Decennial Census data (1970-2010), Center for
Promise researchers looked into reasons for the variation.

 

October 21, 2016

Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times

How can elementary schools save nearly $50 per student? By bringing in
dental professionals to put sealants on their molars, federal health
officials said Tuesday. If that doesn’t sound like an education-related
problem, consider this: Cavities that go untreated cause kids to do
worse in school.

 

Emily Goldberg, The Atlantic

Across the United States, up to one in five children suffers from a
mental disorder in a given year, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. This equates to more than 17 million young
people who meet criteria for disorders that affect their ability to
learn, behave, and express their emotions. Giving children access to
mental-health resources early in their education, however, can play a
key role in mitigating negative consequences later in life, said David
Anderson, the senior director of the ADHD and Behavior Disorders Center
at the Child Mind Institute.

 

Peter Rowe, The San Diego Union-Tribune

Sixth-grader Josh Zientek literally immersed
himself in a cutting-edge educational tool: a tub of mud. “Get your
hands in there and mix it up,” Sharyl Massey, an instructor, told
a gaggle of 12- and 13-year-olds gathered in a greenhouse. They were
preparing soil for milkweed seeds that some day will sprout and nourish
flocks of migrating Monarch butterflies.

For 70 years, Cuyamaca Outdoor School — better known as sixth grade camp
— has specialized in such hands-on, low-tech assignments. Even
today there’s a decided lack of laptops or iPads, but few seem to mind.

 

October 14, 2016

Kat Lonsdorf, NPR

Middle school is tough. Bodies change. Hormones rage. Algebra becomes a
reality. But there are things schools can do to make life easier for
students — like this big study we wrote about showing that K-8 schools
may be better for kids than traditional middle schools.

But aside from re-configuring an entire school system, are there other ways to make the sixth-grade experience better?

 

Sonali Kohli, Los Angeles Times

Most school days, 17-year-old Alex Snyder eats lunch with a pot-bellied pig named Peanut.

John R. Wooden High School is small. It doesn’t have a football field or
a swimming pool or a gym. But it has a farm. And the farm has become a
central part of Alex’s life. “It’s my job to go around…every morning
and feed the animals,” Alex recently told students visiting the
grounds during his first-period animal behavior class as he took them
by a pair of tussling goats, past the shed filled with hay for the two
alpacas, toward the pigs who were lying by the small pond.

 

Evie Blad, Education Week

Helping schools figure out how to better teach social and emotional
skills to students alongside traditional academic subjects will be the
focus of a new, multiyear endeavor recently announced by the Aspen
Institute. The aim of the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and
Academic Development, which has members from all three sectors, is to
“advance a new vision for what constitutes success in schools,” the
Aspen Institute said in a statement announcing the group’s formation.

 

October 7, 2016

Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times

Anyone looking for confirmation of the nation’s cultural divide can add
education and gender-neutral bathrooms to the list of proof points.
North Carolina sparked a national furor by requiring transgender people
to use bathrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth
certificates, citing risks to children in schools as a primary
justification. California has been shifting the other way with little
fanfare.

 

Sharon Noguchi, The Mercury News

At least two Saturdays each month, a few hundred students crowd into
Overfelt High School’s library and classrooms to research papers, catch
up on homework and collaborate on projects.

It’s not that the students love spending weekends at school. Some are
getting extra credit or making up work, but many are drawn by the
school’s internet access — something that an estimated 400 students,
nearly a third of Overfelt’s student body, don’t have at home. Soon,
that problem could disappear. In one of the nation’s first efforts at
creating a school-district-wide network that reaches into students’
homes, the East Side Union High School District and city of San Jose are
teaming up to provide free wireless internet access in some of the
city’s poorest neighborhoods.

 

September 30, 2016

 

Christina Cox, The Santa Clarita Valley Signal

California is now the first state in the county to require suicide prevention policies in middle schools and high schools statewide. Assembly Bill 2246 “Suicide Prevention Policies in School,” authored by Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach) and sponsored by Equality California and The Trevor Project, was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown Tuesday. The new law requires local district schools to adopt unique suicide prevention, intervention and follow-up plans for students in grades 7 to 12. Policymakers hope the law will save lives and reduce the statistics of what the Center for Disease Control and Prevention calls the second-leading cause of death among young people ages 10 to 24.

Michael Collier, EdSource

When Gov. Jerry Brown pushed his idea for giving local schools and districts more control over decision making, few people would have predicted that in at least one California elementary school district physical education would rise to the top of its list of priorities.

That’s what happened in the K-6 Robla School District on the outskirts of Sacramento, which serves mostly low-income Latino and Asian students. Using funds received from the Local Control Funding Formula, the district hired five new physical education teachers this year – one for each school in the district. But school leaders have gone way beyond more P.E. They have come up with an ambitious plan to revolutionize the way the district’s 2,200 students, their families, teachers and staff eat, exercise and relax – with additional help from charitable organizations.

Patrick Butler, The Guardian

In Finland, whose comprehensive school system has sat at the top of Europe’s rankings for the past 16 years, the narrow, heated debates on school governance and structure that obsess the UK – free schools, academies, grammars – do not exist. Schools ultimately deliver academic success, the Finns would agree – and there has been intense worldwide interest in how they manage it (see below) – but they would also argue that groundwork for good school performance begins earlier, long before children enter formal school, and arguably while their future pupils are still in nappies.

September 23, 2016

 

Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource

The California Department of Education has named 13 educators to a planning team to develop social and emotional learning guidelines for schools across the state, a sign of the growing state and national interest in teaching students the interpersonal skills that contribute to success in college and work. The planning team marks the start of California’s involvement in a new eight-state project known as the Collaborating States Initiative, launched in July by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, a Chicago-based nonprofit. The two-year initiative is intended to help state educators understand what social and emotional learning — which includes teaching students to listen respectfully, manage stress and set personal goals — looks like in the classroom and how states might map out a grade-level guide to developmentally appropriate skills.

 

Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week

No matter how diligent teachers and administrators are, it’s easy for bullying to happen under the noses of adults at school. In the bathrooms, the hallways, and on social media, students are often the only ones around to police themselves. That’s why researchers at Princeton, Rutgers, and Yale universities are analyzing middle schoolers’ social networks to find the students most likely to change their classmates’ attitudes around bullying. They are finding that bullying is generally driven not by a few bad apples but by a majority of students within the overall culture of a school.

 

Meg Anderson, NPR

About one in five children in the United States shows signs of a mental health disorder — anything from ADHD to eating disorders to suicide. And yet, as we’ve been reporting this month, many schools aren’t prepared to work with these students. Often, there’s been too little training in recognizing the problems, the staff who are trained are overworked, and there just isn’t enough money. When there are enough people to handle the job, how should all the different roles fit together?

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