From an email by Rethinking Schools: Dear friends, In Rethinking Schools’ fall editorial, we wrote about how students had been subjected to months of watching Donald Trump “use racist, Islamophobic, misogynist, and anti-immigrant vitriol to…
Topic: teachers
Amid Teacher Shortage, Utah has Relaxed Rules on Teacher Certification
Big news for Utah education: Utah’s State Board of Education voted unanimously to approve a new alternative pathway for public school teachers to obtain a teaching license, eliminating a policy requiring candidates to take college-level…
The Wells Fargo Scandal Sounds a Lot like the Atlanta Teacher-Test Scores Scandal
A good read on the similarities between the two scandals: This all sounds a lot like the Atlanta public schools test-cheating scandal of 2013. The superintendent relied on cash incentives for raising test scores and…
First-Year Teacher Upsets Many during First Amendment Lesson where He Stomped on the American Flag
The teacher in question, Lee Francis, has been placed on administrative leave after a student took a photo of him during his lesson and it went viral (i.e. many people saw it and it gained…
Look for the Union Label
Teachers’ unions can now point to an academic study to defend themselves against the charge that they prevent the firing of bad teachers, but the study itself is more of a hypothetical defense against very…
Baltimore County Public Schools No Longer Grades on Homework, Behavior of Students
You’d think this was a sick practical joke for the county’s schoolteachers, but it isn’t: Under the new system, a student’s behavior is factored out of his or her grades. The school system also now…
North Carolina Imports More Teachers than it Exports
Not sure if this is something that North Carolina wants to boast about? It’s an interesting find that this state imports more teachers than it exports to other states.
Study: Minority Teachers have Higher Quit Rate than Others
This is a legitimate concern: An Albert Shanker Institute study has found that “[t]eachers of color continue to be underrepresented” in the United States, with, notably, nine large cities seeing drops in the number of…
$8 Billion Spent on Teacher Development Have Not Improved Teachers
Wait, spending more money on teachers to help them in professional development doesn’t actually help?! The 50 largest school districts in America collectively spend $8 billion a year on professional development for teachers. What are…
Teachers’ Union Chief agrees Bad Teachers Should Go
Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, agreed that bad teachers should be let go. This is a major change, as she defended teachers who helped students cheat on tests in previous years.