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Individualize instruction, remove barriers, track student progress: Some tips for making distance-learning special ed work

“Can you give an example of an online lesson that’s effective for students with disabilities?” That’s the question Elizabeth Barker has fielded over and over as schools have prepared to reopen. But it’s the one question that Barker, a special education expert with NWEA, a nonprofit data and assessment provider, can’t answer. Because students in...
By Beth Hawkins | September 9, 2020
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COVID-19 crisis offers chance to challenge the status quo, including the persistent lack of teacher diversity

Education leaders across the country are experiencing a summer like no other as they plan for what the school experience will be for millions of students and families in the upcoming academic year. In considering the wide range of reopening scenarios — such as whether all students can safely return to school, if a hybrid...
By Cassandra Herring | September 8, 2020
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Los Angeles superintendent calls $150M COVID-19 testing effort ‘necessary and appropriate,’ but what he really wants is a national plan

While the Los Angeles Unified School District is not opening its schools anytime soon, the system’s massive COVID-19 testing and tracing initiative could be the “missing piece” that will allow students to return to classrooms and keep them there, said Superintendent Austin Beutner. The $150 million-per-year program — involving multiple research and health care partners...
By Linda Jacobson | September 2, 2020
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Educators spend $13 billion a year on ed tech for K-12 classrooms. EdTech Genome Project is looking to help them make better choices

Educators in the United States spend $13 billion annually on ed tech but have no way to collectively track the success of those technology tools. That’s why the EdTech Evidence Exchange, part of the University of Virginia, has launched the EdTech Genome Project — to create a framework to give K-12 school and district decision...
By Tim Newcomb | September 1, 2020
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Charters were quicker to provide instruction, regular contact during closures, reports say. But that’s also how they ‘keep the kids,’ one expert explains

Charter schools appeared to follow a more routine class schedule and stay in closer contact with students and families following shutdowns than district schools, according to a new analysis out Tuesday from Public Impact and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. But similar percentages of both charter and district schools distributed devices to students, and districts...
By Linda Jacobson | August 31, 2020
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15 years after Hurricane Katrina, how 5 New Orleans educators are tapping lessons from the storm to confront COVID-19

On the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the devastation wrought by the storm and subsequent flood is still hard to fathom. Within a day of the storm’s landfall Aug. 29, 2005, 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater. Tens of thousands of evacuees crowded into sports arenas and convention centers there and in Baton Rouge...
By Beth Hawkins | August 27, 2020
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Majority of Americans give Trump a failing grade on education policy ahead of re-election bid, PDK poll finds

As President Donald Trump makes his case for re-election and the nation confronts a school system in disarray, the results of a new poll taken in the early days of the pandemic show a majority of Americans giving him a failing grade on key education issues. While 53 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance...
By Mark Keierleber | August 26, 2020
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‘Do you really want to spend the money on online Yale?’ For the Class of 2020, gap years beckon

In the months leading up to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 was looking pretty good to Lizbeth Luevano. Before the year even began, she had received early acceptance to Stanford — a dream for the 18-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants in California’s Coachella Valley. After striving to master English in her early years, Lizbeth had developed...
By Kevin Mahnken | August 25, 2020
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Soares: Substitute teachers are unsung heroes in reopening schools. They deserve better pay and professional development

As President Donald Trump continues to demand that schools reopen and families across the country anxiously await decisions, districts are asking a critical question: Will teachers come back once the doors reopen? Early indications suggest that while many will, others fearful of COVID-19 won’t. Those absences will exacerbate a supply gap of some 110,000 teachers...
By Nicola Soares | August 24, 2020
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The achievement gap has driven education reform for decades. Now some are calling it a racist idea

For decades, a coalition of educators, politicians and activists have fixed one goal above all others in their mission to promote equity in education: closing the racial achievement gap. Its very existence — the stubborn divergence in standardized test scores between white students and students of color — belies the progressive dream of a color-blind...
By Kevin Mahnken | August 21, 2020