The United States has a long history of public education, stretching back to within just a few years of the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1620). In 1635 — just 15 years after the Mayflower’s arrival — the Boston Latin School was opened with a novel premise: that anyone, regardless of social class, could […]
Quizzes are an established fact of the school experience. The pop quiz is a trope that occurs again and again in movies, always — literally always — accompanied by a groan from students. It would be easy to dismiss quizzes as either a form of teacher retribution for bad behavior or low-level recall that kids […]
Many teachers report being driven by the ‘lightbulb’ moments they see their students experience — the moment when understanding dawns, the problem is solved, all the pieces click into place. A 2018 study(1) attempted to map what happens in the brain when one of these moments occurs and the findings were fascinating. The researchers were […]
In Part 1 we looked at the history of the Department of Education and its critical role as a funder, collector, and disseminator of education research. In Part 2, we looked at what the DOE actually funds and what the impact of that funding is. Today, we are looking at what might be the most […]
In Part I, we discussed the important role the US Department of Education (DOE) plays in funding, collecting, and disseminating data related to education. In this post, we’re going to talk about the DOE’s role in providing funding for K-12 education. Federal education funding is distributed to states and school districts through various formulas (such […]
The Department of Education is a federal-level agency that performs several valuable and necessary functions both in education and for the country as a whole. In light of some calls to eliminate the Department of Education, it’s worth taking a closer look at what the agency actually does, and what impact it has on U.S. […]
In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to do a deeper dive on a survey published by Pew Research in April of 2024 because there were some distinctly odd things about how the data were presented. The survey had this title: About half of Americans say public K-12 education is going in […]
In Part 1, we talked about the three ways teaching is viewed culturally — as profession, job, or calling — and we looked in depth at arguments for considering teaching a profession. In Part 2, we discussed whether teaching is or should be a calling. In Part 3 we’ll look at teaching as a job […]
In Part 1, we talked about the three ways teaching is viewed culturally — as profession, job, or calling — and we looked in depth at arguments for considering teaching a profession. In Part 2, we’re going to examine teaching as a calling. In every interview I ever had for a teaching position, I was […]
It would be overstating things to say that how we define teaching is a hot topic. In light of teacher shortages and high teacher attrition, things like cultural definitions can seem a bit fringe. But I think it’s a question that bears some careful consideration because of those attrition rates, especially among new teachers, and […]