Growing Class Sizes: Creative Solutions for Challenging Times

What could cause a student to go from Student of the Month one year to nearly failing the next? Family problems, class size, social changes, and a more challenging workload could all be indicators of a rough academic year. For Shania, a third grade student at P.S. 148 in New York who was profiled in a recent Huffington Post article, a combination of these factors brought her grades so low she came close to repeating the third grade.Â Â She is not alone, especially among low-income, urban, and rural students in the United States.

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Will Khan Academy Replace the Traditional Classroom?

The flipped classroom model has begun to pick up speed in classrooms around the country, allowing students to watch lectures at home and teachers to spend more one-on-one time with students in the classroom as they complete work that would typically be done at home.

KhanÂ AcademyÂ is an open-source website that has attracted many followers, from teachers creating a curriculum that require students to watch aÂ KhanÂ AcademyÂ video to students looking for online help to complete their homework. Many experts in education believe the flipped classroom, with the help ofÂ KhanÂ Academy or websites like it, will change the traditional classroom for the 21st century student. However,Â KhanÂ AcademyÂ and the freedom that comes with learning behind a computer doesn’t come without its critics.

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Transfer: Connecting 21st Century Skills to the Real World

Many call for students and grads to possess 21^stÂ century skills, but few knowÂ how to measure whether or not a student has mastered 21st century skills.

A group of education and science experts recently released a report that aims to “define just what researchers, educators, and policymakers mean when they talk about ‘deeper learning’ and ’21st century skills,” according to Education Week. They found skills can be divided in three categories: cognitive skills, interpersonal skills, and intrapersonal skills. However, what was most important and proves to be the hardest to implement and measure is the underlying skill that gives value to all these skills: transfer.

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Career Readiness Evaluated by a Test? The ACT Career Series

ACT Inc. just announced they are developing new assessments aimed at students between 3rd and 10th grade to test their college and career readiness skills. Many states are pushing for more students to leave school with the skills they need to succeed in college and career and ACT believes their new series, to be launched in 2014, will be the answer.

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The Importance of Family Dinners

“Does eating together really make for better-adjusted kids? Or is it just that families that can pull off a regular dinner also tend toÂ have other things (perhaps more money, or more time) that themselves improve child well-being?”

Those are the questions Ann Meier and Kelly Musick asked and recently answered in the New York Times article “Is the Family Dinner Overrated?”Â Meier and Musick conducted a study of 18,000 adolescents and their parents regarding how often they ate dinner a week and the well-being of the adolescent. Well-being was measured by three things: depressive symptoms; drug and alcohol use; and delinquency.
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“Freedom Is Not Free”: Reflections for a Meaningful July Fourth

“Freedom is Not Free” reads the main impact sign of the Korean Memorial at the National MallÂ in Washington, D.C., alongside other remembrances such as the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial.
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Extinguishing Behavioral Problems with Peer Programs: Challenging Students to be Active and Accountable

Engaging students is at the top of every educator’s list, but how to engage today’s studentÂ is far more vexing.

For some, engagement can mistakenly be synonymous with entertainment.Â In schools around the country teachers try tricked out gadgets, expensive software, experimental pedagogies to try and tap into what interests the 21st century student. It’s important to cater to the interests of students, but the end result shouldn’t be to be hip to new technology. Instead, engagement, whether achieved through flashy technologyÂ or not, should aim to tame behavioral problems, improve student grades and retention, deepenÂ learning, and call studentâ€™s forth to be active and accountable .

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Are U.S. Students Born Entrepreneurs?

High unemployment rates have led more people in the U.S. down an entrepreneurial career path, and some believe this is just the pathway all Americans should be taking. Yong Zhao, presidential chair and associate dean for global education in the college of education at the University of Oregon, recently gave a keynote at the International Society for Technology in Education conference where he compared high-achieving students around the world with American students, known for their declining test scores, according to a recentÂ Education WeekÂ article.
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Is College Worth It? When School Loan Debt Brings Less Opportunities

Higher education usually leads to higher pay and more job opportunities. With high unemployment rates, more people are staying in school longer — or returning to school — to reap these increased employment opportunities. In 2009, bachelor’s degree holders earned more than twice as much as those without a high school diploma, 50 percent more than those with a high school diploma, and 25 percent more than associate’s degree holders.¹
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The Solution to Closing the Achievement Gap

It’s a fact. If students don’t exercise their brains over the summer months, they can lose up to three months of reading and math skills gained over the last school year. Low-income students are at the highest risk for summer learning losses, as they have less learning opportunities afforded to them over their summer vacation.

Summer learning programs can be as simple as giving a child books to read over the summer. Or they can be formally offered through a community center, school, church, or neighborhood to serve many kids in the community. In Baltimore County, the number of homeless students has doubled in the last five years. Homeless students are likely to suffer summer learning loses at twice the rate of their nonhomeless peers.^ÂThat’s why Camp St. Vincent is offering a summer learning program for homeless students in the area. Their summer students are beating the odds and walking away from camp retaining more than 80 percent of their reading and math skills.Â ¹
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