 Dear reader,
A wise principal once shared with me a painful, pre-pandemic truth: No one gets through middle school unscathed. Our story on what’s happened to a group of Philadelphia middle schoolers and their teachers who are struggling to stay connected during quarantine is a poignant reminder of the principal’s message and is well worth your time.
Reopening schools safely is as urgent as it is complicated, and once school buildings do reopen, there will be many questions about the role of school police on campuses. This week, The Hechinger Report also took a close look at the shift away from requiring ACT and SAT scores in college admissions, while I spoke with four freshmen about how their first semester of college went during the pandemic. “I barely left my dorm room,” one told me.
We also examined two critical workforce issues: why the U.S. is ill-equipped to help workers find new jobs in a time of high unemployment, and why women, after encountering sexual harassment and discrimination, are pushing for big changes when it comes to apprenticeships. We also bring you the latest research on what’s working in special education, and some hopeful news about music education in the age of Zoom.
As always, we love to hear from our readers.
Liz Willen, Editor
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 Main Idea |
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Isolated from peers and forced into remote learning, students experience loss, educational setbacks – and some unexpected academic progress.
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Reading List
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As districts across the country cut their school resource officers, advocates warn it won’t be enough to end overly harsh discipline of Black students
Apprenticeships are spreading as a debt-free path to the middle class. But in these training programs, sexual harassment and discrimination are endemic. Now women are pushing for change.
Their senior year of high school was upended by the coronavirus. Now freshman year of college has been transformed too. For these students, feeling frozen in place has become the norm.
When even facts are politicized, guidance that teachers steer clear of politics in the classroom is all impossible to navigate.
With almost 11 million people unemployed, the United States is ill-equipped to help them retrain and prepare for new careers.
NYC study shows services improved test scores for children with dyslexia and other specific learning disabilities.
But experiences of colleges that are already test-optional show other changes are also needed.
High schoolers from Rhode Island were trained to conduct their own research on the education problems they experience firsthand.
A longtime music educator looks back and ahead to see how conservatories, classrooms and programs are managing.
Schools can be the common ground that we’ve been looking for, but it will take more than simply reopening them to pick up the pieces of 2020.
Kids need games and a chance to play so they can normalize what they’ve lost.
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Solutions
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"Bringing ‘book-learning’ to life: Pandemic drives surge to forest schools," Healthy Debate
This week’s solutions section came from SolutionsU powered by Solutions Journalism Network and their database of solutions journalism. Search for more solutions.
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👋 Contact Nichole Dobo at [email protected] to give feedback on The Hechinger Report’s newsletters. Did you know we produce newsletters on early childhood, education research, the future of learning and higher education? And it helps us if you recommend our newsletters to a friend.
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