Schools

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• ACT scores show many grads not ready for college-level work
  Jennifer C. Kerr, Associated Press, Aug. 24, 2016 In its annual score report released Wednesday, the testing company said only 38 percent of graduating seniors who took the exam hit the college-prepared
• Baltimore Schools Closed After Outrage Over Frigid Classrooms
  Mary Rose Madden, NPR Morning Edition, January 3, 2018 Baltimore's public schools closed Thursday after parents and educators there complained students were enduring frigid classrooms with plumbing issues — conditions the local teachers union called "inhumane." Four of Baltimore's public schools were closed Wednesday because of facilities problems but the rest had remained open through below freezing temperatures. Some schools hovered around 40 degrees inside. For more on the Baltimore City schools, see https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5782928
• Bernie Sanders Says He Opposes Private Charter Schools. What Does That Mean?
  Bernie Sanders Says He Opposes Private Charter Schools. What Does That Mean? Anya Kamenetz, NPR/WUNC, March 15, 2016
• Detroit students' education takes back seat in funding talks
  By Corey Williams, Associated Press, May. 7, 2016 Lost in the cacophony of Detroit teachers' frequent protests over pay — including the possibility there might not be enough for payroll this summer — poor building conditions and being under state oversight is how the lack of money affects 46,000 students' ability to learn.
• Have We Lost Sight of the Promise of Public Schools?
  Nikole Hannah-Jones, NY Times Magazine (First Words), Feb. 21, 2017 "Democracy works only if those who have the money or the power to opt out of public things choose instead to opt in for the common good. It’s called a social contract, and we’ve seen what happens in cities where the social contract is broken: White residents vote against tax hikes to fund schools where they don’t send their children, parks go untended and libraries shutter because affluent people feel no obligation to help pay for things they don’t need. “The existence of public things — to meet each other, to fight about, to pay for together, to enjoy, to complain about — this is absolutely indispensable to democratic life,” Honig says."
• How The Systemic Segregation Of Schools Is Maintained By 'Individual Choices'
  NPR Fresh Air, January 16, 2017 Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that when it comes to school segregation, separate is never truly equal. "There's never been a moment in the history of this country where black people who have been isolated from white people have gotten the same resources," Hannah-Jones says. "They often don't have the same level of instruction. They often don't have strong principals. They often don't have the same technology." Still, when it was time for Hannah-Jones' daughter, Najya, to attend kindergarten, the journalist chose the public school near their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, even though its students were almost all poor and black or Latino. Hannah-Jones later wrote about that decision in The New York Times Magazine. Before she joined The New York Times to cover racial injustice, Nikole Hannah-Jones was an award-winning reporter at Propublica.
• NPR - Is There A Better Way To Pay For America's Schools? (5 min)
  May 1, 2016 Last part of multi-part series. Includes graph of per-pupil spending
• Segregation at an early age
  Erica Frankenberg, October 2016 Center for Education and Civil Rights, PennState College of Education in affiliation with the National Coalition on School Diversity
• State Taxes, School Budgets And The Quality Of Public Education
  Diane Rehm Show, Aug. 30, 2016 Cutbacks in education in many states have led to frequent reports of staff shortages and large class sizes. According to data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 25 states are spending less per student than before the recession. Several states, including Kansas, cut income taxes recently, creating further shortfalls. But a few states, like Minnesota, are bucking the trend by earmarking new taxes for education. Diane and a panel of guests discuss state taxes, school budgets and the quality of public education. Guests Stephen Moore senior fellow on economics, The Heritage Foundation; senior economic adviser to the Trump campaign Joseph Bishop senior policy advisor, Learning Policy Institute, an education think-tank in California David Sciarra executive director, Education Law Center John Waldron public high school teacher, Booker T Washington High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Tulsa Teacher of the Year in 2003; Democratic candidate for the Oklahoma state senate
• Student achievement gap dominates debate over math
  Lynn Bonner,The News and Observer; Charlotte Observer, June 1, 2017 Math test scores for African-American boys slid dramatically after 2012, after the state changed the way the subject is taught. Concern over the achievement gap between minority and white students nearly helped doom revised math guidelines the State Board of Education considered this week. The new guidelines for students in kindergarten through eighth grade squeaked to approval in a 6-4 vote Thursday after a lengthy discussion about the achievement gap and whether students and teachers in low-wealth districts are getting enough help with new ways to teach and learn the subject. Teachers will begin using the retooled math guidelines in 2018.
• This American Life: The Problem We All Live With
  This American Life, #562, July 31, 2015 Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there's one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation. Nikole Hannah-Jones looks at a district that, not long ago, accidentally launched a desegregation program.