"When we think about how best to ensure that every child is given the educational foundation they need to thrive, we must remember that every child is unique. Children have different skills, different interests, and different learning styles. Our educational system, on the other hand, tries to teach them all in the same setting, with the same approach and curriculum, expecting them all to succeed – and knowing that too many won’t."
"Last year, it became public knowledge that the state college system in Pennsylvania, where I live, had dropped to its lowest enrollment in over 30 years. I participated in a November phone survey on this issue, and the questions sounded like a student recruitment office pleading for affirmation."
As a tenure-track professor who had spent a career in well-established public colleges in New York and New Jersey, I had taken for granted stable employment and was ignorant of the layoff clauses in my union’s contracts. Not anymore.
Baby Boomers are aging out of the workforce and fewer young people are replacing them, leaving massive gaps in important industries like construction, mechanical services, and trucking – all needed to rebuild and strengthen America’s roads, bridges, water infrastructure, and other large-scale projects.
"I work at a high school where the majority of the students are from inner-city Milwaukee. They are confronted almost daily with some form of dysfunction, depravity, or violence. The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) has enabled their parents to send them to Milwaukee Lutheran High School on a voucher."
The founder of the deeply problematic New York Times’ 1619 Project recently ignited more controversy when she made claims about who should be in charge of setting curricular standards for our nation’s students.
Over the last two years, pandemic-driven logistical lurching, budgetary ups and downs, and painfully divisive politics consumed much of the time we might have had for strategic conversations about how we, as educators, better our schools, communities, and students. nnWe need to make time for this now.
The COVID-19 shock sparked “the big quit,” with large numbers of American workers voluntarily leaving their jobs. This disruption has downsides – but also an upside. It’s forcing the United States to reexamine its outdated education and training regime.
Teacher shortages have challenged school districts for decades, but the pandemic turned a problem into a crisis. A lack of qualified teachers not only significantly affects students’ academic achievement but also stalls progress toward their completion of unfinished learning. Unfortunately, teacher shortages are greatest at schools with high populations of low-income students.
