Category: Commonplace

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a metered paywall.

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For now, Florida’s “Stop WOKE” educational gag law remains blocked 🕛 in state colleges and universities (but not K-12 schools) by a federal court injunction.

As expected, Palm Beach Atlantic University, an evangelical Christian college in Florida, fired Prof. Sam Joeckel and banned him from campus after a parent complained that he was teaching a unit on racial justice.

In January, a predominately white middle school near Dallas attempted to subject a Black student to a drastic, life-altering punishment for being afraid of a school shooting threat.

Colleges apparently are responding to student mental health needs by firing 🕛 their counseling center directors.

Between May and December 2020, Berkeley researchers found, school disruptions weren’t harmful to the mental health of American 10-to-13-year-olds, but family financial anxiety was.

According to a new research working paper, the teacher-evaluation reforms initiated by the Obama administration didn’t work.

The Great Migration brought Black students almost one full extra year of schooling in the early 20th century.

When law students at Stanford shouted down a judicial clown, wrote Ken White (known to the Internet as “Popehat”), there were no heroes anywhere in the story. But the “pantomime” was perfectly designed to confirm conservative narratives about universities.

The number of first-time graduates completing bachelor’s degrees at American colleges and universities fell by 2.4% last year, and the number completing associate’s degrees fell by 7.6%.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a metered paywall.

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The parents of a Black teenager attending a predominantly white school in South Carolina are suing after she says a teacher assaulted her for declining to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance.

In the United States, no agency has the authority to regulate indoor air quality, but controlling infectious diseases in schools may depend on nothing more than that.

In Ontario, two professors who were laid off when Laurentian University burned 76 programs called for a criminal investigation of the school’s financial arrangements.

Responding to the latest New York Times opinion piece about supposedly “puritanically progressive campuses that alienate conservative students,” Henry Farrell explained what social science research actually reveals about the differences between conservative and liberal students at college.

Pennsylvania has eliminated the college degree as a required credential for 92% of state government jobs.

David Palmieri examined Catholic dioceses that have adopted policies excluding gay and trans students as well as workers from their schools.

Charles Kenneth Roberts observed that academia’s supposed “quiet quitting” phenomenon is just a manifestation of a deeper crisis in the way academic work is (or, more likely, isn’t) rewarded.

According to the latest “autonomy scorecard” 🕛 published by the European University Association, governments across 35 European countries or regions are finding a variety of ways to undermine the independence of their public institutions. Hungary is no longer included in the scorecard at all.

After only 927 years, the University of Oxford has banned its employees from pursuing sex with students.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a metered paywall.

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In a deadly rail disaster in Greece, the dozens of victims included many university students, returning to Thessaloniki after celebrating Carnival.

Iranian authorities are investigating strange reports that girls in dozens of schools across Iran have been poisoned with unknown substances.

In 2020, during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the former British education minister Gavin Williamson sent WhatsApp messages complaining that teachers’ unions “just hate work.” British educators are not amused.

The campus revival at Asbury University took a new turn this week when Kentucky officials announced 🕛 that an unvaccinated attendee may have exposed 20,000 people to measles.

In Manhattan, the tiny but well-connected evangelical Christian institution The King’s College appears to be in severe 🕛 financial distress. Its journalism chair, Paul Glader, explained that the crisis may be connected with the role of a Canadian billionaire.

The FBI says a former systems administrator for the University of Michigan’s college of arts and sciences threatened to kill Jewish officials in Michigan, including the attorney general, as well as various university employees and public health figures. He said he was fired for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

A jury took less than two hours of deliberation to find a sheriff and detective liable 🕛 for $5 million’s worth of damages after they violently arrested a Virginia high school teacher on false charges of sexually abusing a minor.

In The Nation That Never Was, Kermit Roosevelt III argues that the real American founding happened not in 1776 but a century later. Jamelle Bouie argued 🕛 this week that Florida’s higher education censors should take note.

Three teachers running the pilot version of AP African American Studies spoke with NPR about its contents and effects.

As news organizations focused on the Supreme Court’s imminent decision about affirmative action in college admissions, Julie Wollman and Jacqueline Wallis begged them to pay attention to the colleges that educate 95% of American students, for whom the ruling may be “largely inconsequential.”

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a metered paywall.

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A two-weeks-long evangelical revival on the campus of Asbury University has moved 🕛 off-campus, more or less. It’s been a lot for a small college to handle.

Palm Beach Atlantic University, an evangelical Christian college that does not have tenure, allegedly 🕛 initiated the possible firing of a full professor for teaching “works from Black authors and civil rights activists” in a unit on racial justice. The provost ambushed him after class, then went to prepare for the arrival of the Florida governor on campus.

In spite of overwhelming opposition from students, faculty, and community members, Marymount University’s board of trustees voted unanimously to eliminate nine majors in the humanities and social sciences. Students at the Catholic university will no longer be able to major in religion.

The first Black superintendent of Virginia Military Institute, Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, is facing 🕛 an organized campaign of opposition, led by another alumnus whose racist radicalization over the past decade has surprised some who knew him as a student.

The just-arm-teachers approach to preventing gun violence is going well at Rising Star Independent School District, near Abilene, where a third grader found 🕛 a gun the “beloved” superintendent accidentally left in the bathroom.

Meredith Draughn, the American School Counselor Association’s school counselor of the year, offered advice for helping children shift to “post-pandemic” life.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a metered paywall.

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Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, at least 338,000 🕛 Americans have lived through shootings at their schools—almost half since the attack at Parkland five years ago. Last year was the worst yet.

At Michigan State University, Prof. Marco Díaz-Muñoz described what it was like to have his class on Cuban literature targeted by the gunman who would kill at least two of his students: Arielle Anderson and Alexandria Verner.

Avery Thrush explained why Teach for America made her leave teaching.

Other kinds of schools care about building moral and civic virtue, Johann Neem wrote; what makes a real college education different is its focus on intellectual virtue.

The FBI conducted searches at the University of Delaware as part of its investigation of Joseph Biden’s handling of classified documents.

Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, contrasted his position with that of the Florida governor when announcing 🕛 that 25 public schools in New Jersey will offer AP African American studies next year.

A meta-analysis by researchers in Switzerland and Australia cast doubt on the effectiveness of many “flipped” classrooms.

The chief science officer of the American Psychological Association testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the effects of social media on adolescent development.

Stanford University’s student newspaper reported allegations of research misconduct and a coverup by the current Stanford president when he was an Alzheimer’s researcher in private industry.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week.

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In the last full academic year, U.K. universities saw a sharp decline in new enrollments by E.U. students but a large increase in non-E.U. international enrollments.

Jessamyn Neuhaus talked about the Hollywood cliché of the charismatic “super-teacher”—and named one television show that gets teaching right.

Investigating its own failure during the Uvalde school massacre, the Texas state police agency fired one sergeant and plans to fire one Texas ranger. Ninety-one of its employees responded to the massacre as it happened.

An independent investigation found that Jean Vanier established L’Arche International, a network of communities caring for people with intellectual disabilities, as cover for reuniting a sex cult that had been disbanded by the Vatican.

It’s not a representative sample, but Boston University researchers announced that they have detected chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of 345 (92%) of the 376 former NFL players they’ve studied—including former players from both of the teams in this weekend’s Super Bowl.

Stanford University researchers studying why U.S. public schools have lost 1.2 million students during the pandemic found that 14% of those students have enrolled in private schools, 26% became homeschoolers, and 26% may represent a decline in the school-age population. The remaining 34% are harder to identify, but some are probably students who skipped kindergarten.

Absenteeism has been high among teenagers in British schools, with a third of 15-year-olds being “persistently absent” from schools in England this year.

Temple University is retaliating against a strike by some of its graduate workers, taking an action that is likely to force them out of graduate school entirely.

Despite its recent statements implying otherwise, the College Board seems to have been in direct negotiations with Florida officials over the contents of its AP African American studies curriculum as early as September 2022.

A study found that attending Tulsa’s free pre-K program made students more likely to enroll in college years later.

Some stories and essays, especially related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol warns about a metered paywall.

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Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History has accepted the donation of Bobbi Wilson’s collection of spotted lanternflies. At nine years old, Wilson was also honored by the Yale School of Public Health for her efforts to control the invasive insect in her neighborhood.

Pandemic funding helped drive schools’ student-to-counselor ratio to its lowest level since statistics began in 1986.

In New York City, school workers struggle to support nearly 9,000 children who have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19.

A faculty committee report blamed 🕛 the University of Arizona for failing to act effectively on months of warnings about an expelled graduate student who allegedly murdered a professor on campus.

A judge in Denver ruled that a philosopher who was followed to UCLA by “a trail of red flags” from students at Duke and Cornell is unfit to stand trial for violent threats.

Despite resigning in disgrace during their schools’ sex abuse scandals, the former Michigan State president Lou Anna K. Simon and the former Penn State president Graham Spanier never really 🕛 went away.

In the United States, it is presumably legal for neo-Nazis to homeschool their children.

The disgraced former president Donald Trump apparently called for the creation of a national credentialing organization to certify that teachers are politically correct.

North Dakota is considering a bill 🕛 to grant state university presidents the unilateral power to fire any faculty member.

The Florida governor continued working to weaken the independence of his state’s higher education system.

Kati Kokal, an education reporter for the Palm Beach Post, explained in a Twitter thread how she reported on Florida’s new requirement that student athletes turn over their menstrual history to their schools.

To understand why Florida banned AP African American studies courses, wrote Dean Obeidallah, look at opinion polls of potential presidential primary voters.

The College Board, however, insisted it’s only a coincidence 🕛 that revisions to its AP African American studies curriculum, released this week, look like a response to partisan political pressure.

Meanwhile, three Black academics—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and E. Patrick Johnson—spoke with Democracy Now! about the revisions.

Last year, the Jesuit theologian Ryan Duns, who taught high school in Detroit before becoming a professor at Marquette University, offered 21 pieces of advice 🕛 for new teachers.

Teachers and university employees were among hundreds of thousands of public workers who went on strike in the U.K. on Wednesday.

Six college students talked with Open Campus about what the pandemic cost them in high school and how it has shaped their first year as undergraduates.

As he prepares a sequel, the author of Visible Learning has some regrets. 🕛

To get students to pay more attention in class, college teachers need to pay more attention to them.

Eastern Washington University unblocked a history professor on Twitter after more than a year. The school’s communications director admitted it had blocked Larry Cebula for criticizing its athletics programs.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week.

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In New Delhi, officials at Jawaharlal Nehru University ordered students to cancel the “unauthorized” screening of a documentary criticizing the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.

In Iowa, a state representative appeared to blame the murder of a high school Spanish teacher, allegedly by two students, on the school district’s COVID-19 mask mandate.

In Florida, state Senator Shevrin Jones warned that the education department’s ban on AP African American Studies, together with other educational gag laws, could create “an entire generation of Black children who will not be able to see themselves represented in their own state or in education.”

In New Jersey, a 29-year-old woman enrolled in high school and attended for four days.

After the conservative activist Christopher Rufo targeted an Appalachian nonprofit called Sexy Sex Ed, harassment forced it to suspend its work.

Lloyd Morrisett, who co-created Sesame Street, died at the age of 93.

The Wharton-educated founder of a startup promising to get college students more financial aid was sued for fraud by JPMorgan, which bought her firm for $175 million in 2021.

In the new book Outsmart Your Brain, the psychologist Daniel Willingham explains to students why their intuitions about learning may be misleading.

Stories and essays, particularly related to education in the United States, that caught my attention this week. A 🕛 symbol indicates a known metered paywall.

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The BBC World Service’s Witness History program looked back at the “house schools” that Albanians in Kosovo created in response to Slobodan Milošević’s repression during the 1990s.

The Cardiff University psychologist Nic Hooper published a short introduction to acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for anxious university students.

During the 2021 pandemic year, women of color made up a disproportionate share of the nearly one million Americans who went back to college.

Some experts believe 2023 will be a rocky 🕛 year for U.S. college closures.

Amanda Peet, the show’s co-creator, confirmed that the Netflix series The Chair won’t get a second season. (I wrote about the show here.)