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| | LATEST NEWS FOR PRINCIPALS |
The Associated Press via The Washington Times
Schools across the country are preparing to formally track students from military families, monitoring their academic progress as they move from military base to military base and state to state, under a new provision in the federal education law. The change comes in response to concerns raised by the Department of Defense that the children of active-duty members of the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force and Marines have academic and emotional needs that schools are ill-equipped to meet.
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Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Despite the growing use of computers and software in every facet of our economy, not until recently has computer science education begun to gain traction in American school systems. The current focus on improving science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in the U.S. school system has disregarded differences within STEM fields. Indeed, the most important STEM field for a modern economy is not only one that is not represented by its own initial in "STEM" but also the field with the fewest number of high school students taking its classes and by far has the most room for improvement — computer science.
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Edutopia
Research shows that reflection is an essential part of learning. That means that we need time to think about — and talk about — the ways we have processed and applied new information, concepts, and ideas. Unfortunately, including routine reflection time and activities in our curriculum can be an afterthought for many of us teachers. Here's one reason why student reflection definitely deserves more attention: When students reflect on what they have learned, ownership of that new knowledge increases — and with ownership comes more application and use of that new skill or knowledge.
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Education World
Certain studies have revealed that though kids these days are called "digital natives" because they have lived their whole lives surrounded by technology, many lack basic tech skills. Some schools are trying to address this problem head-on by providing students with keyboarding classes during ages as young as four and five. "The hope is that in the future," said Omaha.com, "middle schoolers can focus less on rote typing techniques and more on advanced skills like coding and website development." The recent push for more programming-savvy adults aside, the fact that state exams are increasingly being switched to online platforms makes skills like typing become a necessary skill for future success.
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MindShift (commentary)
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a contributor for MindShift, writes: "Teachers intuitively know that neither their nor their students' learning is steady and constant, the same day in and day out and moment to moment, consistent from topic to topic. Rather, we all have good and bad days; moments of excitement, engagement, and inspiration and moments of disappointment, disengagement and frustration; afternoons just before vacation and mornings just after; some skills and topics that we find interesting and some that we don't."
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The Atlantic
How do you join a conversation at a middle-school lunch table? What do you say when someone says hi to you in the hallway and you don't know her name? How do you delicately correct a member of your lab group in science without calling him stupid? Is it appropriate to tell your English teacher all about your deep and abiding interest in Pokémon characters?
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Education Week
The makers of digital learning games and their advocates have struggled for years to break into the mainstream of K-12 education. The games suffered from the perception that they were not directly linked to district curricula or that they lacked academic rigor. But it now appears that the use of digital learning games in schools is rising, as the learning tools achieve a higher level of relevance in the minds of educators.
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eSchool News
Technology, collaboration, and new standards are changing the classroom at a rapid pace. Every teacher's professional development must keep up.
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The Huffington Post
Students born into poverty enter kindergarten at a disadvantage to more affluent peers. As they advance through the grades, they receive lower test scores. They're more likely to drop out and less likely to enter higher education. The all-too-familiar cycle, in some ways, is getting worse, according to data in a new report from the National Center for Education Statistics. The report, "The Condition of Education 2016," is the 42nd of its kind, produced under congressional mandate by The U.S. Department of Education's data branch, the National Center for Education Statistics. It outlines the latest data on everything from public school enrollment to the median earnings of degree recipients.
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By: Bambi Majumdar
 A recent Education Week article said that the number of students with disabilities from ages 6 to 21 has risen to 5.83 million. This upswing in school-age students covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has brought forward a pressing need to take another look at K-12 special education programs and their allocated budgets. There has been improvement in special-education programs during the last few decades, but when we see this rise in numbers, one is forced to wonder how effective these programs have to be.
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| | FEDERAL ADVOCACY AND POLICY |
Education Week
For district leaders, suing states over school finance formulas may seem like a high-stakes gamble on where judges will come down, as high-profile decisions with very different outcomes in Texas, Kansas, and Washington state suggest. But in reality, the fate of these challenges is far from random, hinging instead on plaintiffs' ability to prove that those formulas abide by the specifics — and ambiguities — of each state's constitution, legal scholars say.
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The New York Times
Dinah Sykes, a parent of two boys in a suburb of Kansas City, started noticing changes to her children's public schools a few years ago. Class sizes were growing. The school library had stopped buying books. So she used her position as the president of the parent-teacher association to start a new tradition: Instead of bringing cupcakes to class for their birthdays, students were asked to bring a book to donate to the school library. Sykes is a Republican who once voted for the governor from her party, Sam Brownback. But now, she said, she is so concerned that public schools are endangered by the state's budget crisis that she is running for a seat in the State Senate, challenging the incumbent senator in the Republican primary in August.
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NPR
Mel Atkins has spent most of his life with Grand Rapids Public Schools in Michigan. He graduated from Ottawa Hills High, where he played baseball. But his real love was bowling. He says he's bowled 22 perfect games. He's been a teacher and principal in the city's public schools. And now he works for the district, overseeing just about everything related to students. One more thing you need to know about him: Mel Atkins is a number-cruncher.
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NAESP
Educators have long wrangled with the misguided "one-size-fits-all" accountability measures that were the hallmark of the No Child Left Behind Act. Reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act, the new law features a provision that requires states to build a new school quality indicator under Title I. This will allow eligible schools to show a broader set of individual features and accomplishments to meet the federal law's accountability requirements. And although these accountability provisions are technical and complicated, NAESP is pleased that ESSA empowers principals and other practitioners to provide input on accountability and assessment policies.
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NAESP
Together with Crayola, NAESP offers a special opportunity to apply for a Champion Creatively Alive Children Grant. Your school could receive a $3,500 grant (a $2,500 check and $1,000 worth of Crayola products) to establish a creative leadership team and build the creative capacity of your professional learning community. The application form can be found here. The deadline to apply is Monday, June 20. (The Early Bird Deadline is June 6.)
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