Journal

Journal

Social Emotional Learning Part 3: Long-term Benefits

In Part 1 we looked at what Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is and why it’s important for kids. We talked about the five competencies of SEL and how each plays out in highly logical ways in classrooms – ways that are consistent with moral human behaviors like respect, kindness, patience, self-control, perseverance, responsibility, and so […]

Social Emotional Learning Part 2: Short Term Benefits

In Part 1 we looked at what Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is and why it’s important for kids. We talked about the five competencies of SEL and how each plays out in highly logical ways in classrooms – ways that are consistent with moral human behaviors like respect, kindness, patience, self-control, perseverance, responsibility, and so […]

Social Emotional Learning Part 1: What it is and Why it’s Important

The Iowa Senate is advancing a bill out of committee that would ban Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for public school students.  The bill was introduced by a Republican state senator in late January.  The meat of the bill is this: “The department [of Education] shall not display on the department’s internet site or otherwise disseminate […]

Is Everything We Think We Know About School Shootings Wrong? (Part 2)

In Part I, we discussed how the “intuitive” measures to address potential school shootings – more security, more armed personnel, more expulsions, more mental health resources – actually aren’t effective at preventing shootings.  Instead, they mostly focus on dealing with shooters when they’ve already shown up with a gun. At that point, the risk of […]

Is Everything We Think We Know About School Shootings Wrong? (Part 1)

School shootings are terrifying, both in their suddenness and their level of violence. The age of the victims makes them tragedies that are hard to forget. The worst ones in recent years – Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Parkland – have inspired a host of strategies meant to stop future shooters.  This impulse makes a lot of […]

Can We ‘Moneyball’ Education? — Part 2

In Part 1, we explored how we might ‘moneyball’ education — apply some of the systemic principals pioneered by the Oakland A’s baseball team to maximize their ability to win in the face of budget constraints.  The system required using objective means rather than human perception and tradition to make decisions that improved the team’s […]

Can We ‘Moneyball’ Education? — Part 1

The 2003 book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis, was a deep dive into the system the Oakland A’s developed to select the best baseball players they could with their limited budget. It was a system that got a lot of pushback initially because it seemed to violate all the canons of player selection favored by scouts.  […]

Covid and Learning Loss

It’s taken a while, but data crunchers are finally quantifying how the Covid-19 pandemic affected student learning.  The results are detailed in a recent article from NPR ,  which offers 6 takeaways about pandemic learning loss. Debating Terms One of the points made by the article is that what students experienced as a result of […]

School Choice: Opportunity Hoarding (Part 6 of 6)

“We’ve tried: standardized tests, charter schools, smaller classes, longer school days, stricter discipline, looser discipline, tracking, differentiation. We’ve decided the problem is teachers. The problem is parents. What is true about almost all these reforms is that when we look for what’s broken we look at who they’re failing: poor kids, black kids, brown kids. […]

School Choice: How Choice Drives Segregation (Part 5 of 6)

In Part 1, we talked about the impact SCOTUS is having on education; in Part 2, we saw how the private school setting didn’t produce higher achievement for students. In Part 3, we looked at how the effects of School Choice compounded with each other to produce schools segregated by race, income, and social status. […]