The British teacher who let her class of Sudanese seven-year-olds name a teddy bear “Mohammed” has been sentenced to 15 days in jail followed by deportation from Sudan for insulting Islam. Gillian Gibbons had faced a maximum sentence of a year in jail and 40 lashes if convicted of all charges. A crowd that […]
Archive for May, 2008
U.S. News’ list of best high schools analyzes reading and math scores, including a look at how low-income students are doing, and challenges, such as how many students take and pass AP exams.
The story on Massachusetts, the “first-class state,” includes MATCH, a “gold medal” Boston charter school that recruits low-income minority students. Hidalgo High, […]
Effort, not superior intelligence, is the key to success, writes psychologist Carol Dweck in Scientific American. Telling children their success is a result of their ability leaves them “vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn,” she writes.
Teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather […]
Academic contests are good for students, writes Betsy, who coaches her charter high school’s quiz bowl team. She links to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who helps students prepare for writing contests. Progressive private school administrators “will not support their students in literary, science or math competitions,” Wallace-Segall writes. […]
Texas’s state school board has rejected Everyday Math texts, writes Michelle Malkin in a column excoriating “fuzzy math.”
Citing “an Illinois mom,” Malking says the fifth-grade Everyday Math textbook asks:
A. If math were a color, it would be –, because –.
B. If it were a food, it would be –, because –.
C. If it […]
Getting buried in a Dartmouth coffin is taking college loyalty too far, writes Joie Jager-Hyman, who discovered that Collegiate Memorials carries a line of coffins and urns for people who want to die as they lived between the ages of 18 and 22.
Some parents of disabled students are fighting for separate classes for their children, reports the Wall Street Journal. Mainstreaming doesn’t work well for all kids, parents say.
A majority of special-education students spend 80% or more of the school day in mainstream classrooms, up from about a third in 1990. Federal rules have pushed schools […]
Over at the Carnival of Education, Matt of Matt-a-Matical Thinking is giving out Noble Prizes.
When teachers at Darren’s school give each other gifts for the winter holiday, it’s called Secret Snowman because “Santa” is considered too sectarian.
Can anyone explain in which holy book a fat man with flying reindeer appears? And in which holy book we’re commanded by the deity to cut down trees — the givers […]
Delonte Mohamed, 21, and Satrina McDuffie, 22, are expecting a baby boy. She’s already got two toddlers. Should they get married?
In Couples take baby steps to ‘I Do’, the Baltimore Sun reports on a counseling program for young expectant couples. Many were raised by one parent or less and haven’t observed a stable two-parent family […]
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