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Discovery Center Museum has provided after school activities within the Rockford School District #205 for the past 10 years. The After School Achievement Program is provided to schools within the Rockford School District that are defined as Title One schools. These schools are all located in predominately low-income neighborhoods and have a high number of children on the free or reduced lunch program, and have been placed on a statewide Watch List due to their low academic test scores. This program runs from September-May each year.

safe environment, positive mentoring and lessons that foster success in school and the community at large. Our program helps children succeed, develop a positive self-image and stay in school by improving their English language, reading, math, science and creative skills. Our program also teaches social and personal life skills, team building, and exposes children to a wide variety of cultural experiences

These after school programs are partially funded by the state of Illinois. Discovery Center provides approximately $100,000 of in-kind services for the five schools in which we serve as Lead Agency. This support is in the form of donated staff salaries, a free Family Nights at the museum for participating children and their families, materials, food, student incentives, contractual costs to other participating organizations, free admission to the museum for a field trip one time each year and free family memberships to the museum to all lead agency schools (approximately 500 families).

(City students were excluded from the analysis because no city schools had adopted four-day weeks. Only rural, small town and suburban students were included.)

The switch seemed to hurt reading achievement more than math achievement.

Rural schools accounted for seven out of 10 schools on the four-day schedule in this study.

Budget shortfalls are forcing states to come up with novel solutions for the wide disparities between poor and affluent school districts. The latest reminder was a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in May that ordered the Legislature to increase spending for only the 31 poorest urban districts ("Court Orders New Jersey to Increase Aid to Schools," The New York Times, May 24). Not surprisingly, the decision did not please the other districts in the state. In light of the problem in New Jersey and in other states as well, perhaps it's time to consider what is known as weighted student funding. The Summer 2011 issue of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management contains a study by Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske titled "Weighted Student Funding in the Netherlands: A Model for the U.S.?" For the past quarter of a century, the Netherlands has been using a version of WSF for all its elementary schools serving children from ages 4 to 12.

The U.S. Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm has launched an investigation into a North Texas school district whose superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books.

accused the district of violating a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. The ACLU complaint was based largely on an investigation published in March by NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune that revealed that Granbury’s superintendent, Jeremy Glenn, instructed librarians to remove books dealing with sexual orientation and people who are transgender.

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed the investigation and said it was related to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits schools from discriminating on the basis of sex, gender and sexual orientation.

home-schooling is back to its prepandemic rate of 4 percent, and data from the National Center for Education Statistics found that by far the steepest drops in public school enrollment during the 2020-21 school year were among children in pre-K or kindergarten.

All of this at least raises the question of whether some of the people driving the outrage, even animus, against schools might not have much skin in the game and might not have any recent experience with teachers or curriculum.

The conference, hands-on workshops, science fair, performances, and other activities run October 10–16, one project is currently on view in the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design. The Assignment Book is an exhibition curated by Scholz and Christiane Paul, director of the graduate media studies program at The New School for Public Engagement and Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art, that poses questions for the audience. It features work by artist Luis Camnitzer that grapples with some unresolved questions about digital learning, and is solicited visitors to the gallery to add to the conversation, subverting the traditional role of the artist as teacher. There will be a discussion about this exhibition between Camnitzer and Paul on October 11.

students also want to see this emphasis on mental health occurring school-wide, even education system-wide, in the midst of a pandemic.

her class has been more “bold” in asking for less of that busy work, as well as in asking for extended time for work or test preparation, compared with pre-pandemic school.

The pandemic made even more visible systemic inequities that made safety and school most challenging for the families who needed the most help — the conditions that often worsen mental health in the first place. Students are pushing both for interesting classes and a feeling of safety at school in the ways they can.

A team of researchers across Europe is conducting an experiment to bring the museum into the school using virtual reality technology.

CONNECT project

The CONNECT project team believes that by linking the classroom with science centres, museums, planetariums and observatories, it can marry the best elements of formal curricula with informal learning.

learners shape their own learning experiences,

Learning is available 24/7 and year round across many learning platforms and beyond geographic limits

Now a whole host of learning agents support learning, with some specializing in particular content and others focusing on pedagogy or assessment design. Networked collaboration is the norm.

Students still sit in classrooms, but lessons rely heavily on information found on the Internet and on interactive software. Students will be allowed to learn at their own pace. Homework is done on computer and sent to the teacher for grading and parents can access the school’s network to read teacher feedback on their child’s progress.

[T]extbooks and blackboards are out, so are paper and pens. There aren’t even books in the library. Everything is done on laptops

‘One half of the period you’re learning math, the other half of the period you’re learning science. But it all comes together,’ said one student.