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What are the systems, trends and ideas that are shaping education in the United States? What needs to be done to promote transformative education reform? In this episode of A Deeper Look podcast, I speak with education reformer Dr. Warren Simmons, currently Senior Policy Advisor at the National Education Policy Center at the University of... Read more »

The post The future of global development: The shape of U.S. education in the 2020s appeared first on Degrees.

Teachers lack good climate science curricula. Climate change skeptics fear indoctrination. A pilot NASA course that lets high school kids use their climate modelling software could satisfy both.

Closing schools can slow the spread of disease and, in turn, save lives. But it also causes huge disruptions, especially for children who depend on the free and reduced-cost meals they get at school.

(Image credit: Ted S. Warren/AP)

Closing schools could slow the spread of coronavirus — but school leaders worry closure comes with its own risks, especially for kids who depend on school meals and whose parents can't take off work.

Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi team up to investigate the history of racist ideas through a narrative aimed at young adult readers. It's called: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You.

Egyptian officials insist that it’s safe to visit. But on Monday, tourists in the ancient city of Luxor were confined to their hotels as doctors tested for the virus.

Many schools paused in-person classes after students or staff members tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Others say the cancellations are a precaution.

(Image credit: Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

Nepal provides access to schooling to children in its most disadvantaged districts Language English Philippe Menkoue Mon, 03/09/2020 - 14:20 Slide Image Description At the beginning of each schoolyear, local authorities launch a campaign using posters, flyers, newspaper and radio ads to create awareness and encourage parents to send their children to school. After the campaign and the start of school, the information comes in from the different districts about the actual enrolment rate. Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch Image Description The data points to two main drivers of inequity in Province 2 in terms of education are parents’ education and ethnicity. Many guardians, who have never been to school themselves, do not understand the importance of education, especially girls’ education. So, home visits to parents of out-of-school children were undertaken by several stakeholders and varied across I/NGO projects to tell them their girls and boys needed to be in school. Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch Image Description Some of the ways Nepal's (central and local) government entities are working to achieve 100% enrollment and retention in Mahottari district, one of the country’s 15 poorest performing districts is by distributing bikes to schoolgirls, so they easily get to school. Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch Image Description The government gives an annual scholarship of NPR 400 to all girls studying in government schools to encourage girls’ schooling. The family can use it for notebooks/stationery, uniforms, etc. Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch Image Description Many children from the Muslim community are often considered as out-of-school. Parents usually send them to madrasas to learn about Islam. Madrasas can also be registered to the government which can support them with teachers if they want to add the other pieces of the curriculum (English, Nepali and math) in addition to what they already teach: Urdu, Farsi, Arabic and Islamic education.
The government provides Madrasas as well as other schools with scholarships for girls (NPR 400 per girl) plus salary support for teachers and provides textbooks (if they add the broader curriculum).
Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch Image Description For boys this isn’t a problem, but when it comes to girls, there is certain criteria that needs to be met in order to bring as many girls to school as possible. And for that having female teachers, especially for the primary level is very important. So, when schools come to register with the government, we always ask them how many female teachers they have for primary section. Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch Image Description The GATE program (Girls Access to Education) is a flexible schooling program (FSP). This is for girls aged 10-14. It is a nine month course that allows them to quickly catch up with the basics and then, according to their age group and ability at the end of the program, they are put into mainstream education in whatever class is determined to be appropriate. Image Description For retention (and even enrolment), providing lunch and/or snacks to the students helps a lot. The government has prepared a healthy diet menu so there are specific items that are cooked on specific days. The schools have started their own canteens where they cook and give food to the children. Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch Image Description When schools are making toilets the District check that they build separated toilets for boys and girls. The girls’ toilet should be in an area where they do not have to pass through the boys' area, so the boys don’t see when the girls are going to the toilet. Sanitary napkins are also provided to girls. These are one of the reasons that parents are more willing to send the girls to school—because that used to be a big problem before. Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch Image Description Each school has a suggestion box so people can share with the authorities what exactly the students and teachers need, especially the girls and female teachers. So, someone has a duty to open them twice a week and if there any suggestions, the school will figure out how to address them. Credit GPE/Kelley Lynch

By Esther Care, Ung Chinna, Sarin Sar, Hav Khou

Cambodia has been striving to improve its education system and has engaged in as many opportunities as possible to further student achievement. The country has participated in OECD’s PISA for Development, in the UNICEF-sponsored South East Asia Primary Learning Metric (SEA-PLM) program, and in the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) initiative at Brookings. Drawing lessons from the very different approaches in these assessment programs, Cambodia has assembled an impressive repertoire of skills and knowledge.

Outstandingly, the country has not backed off from its mission to change the status quo in its education system. The Minister of Education, Youth and Sport, H.E. Dr. Hang Chuon Naron, has said, “I don’t care what the results are; I just want to know what they are so that we know what to do about it.” As a testament to this principle, Cambodia is just one of three PISA for Development countries that will continue engagement with OECD’s international large-scale assessment through PISA-2021, to provide comparative data across 2018-2021 that will reflect the impact of education initiatives currently being implemented.

Cambodia’s Education Quality Assurance Department (EQAD) of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport recently showcased its commitment to improvement in a two-day workshop. Concerned about the quality and usefulness of classroom-based assessment, the EQAD unit has developed a strategy.

The workshop

Held in the Kampot Provincial Teacher Training Center in February, EQAD assembled a diverse group of educators, with the conviction that educators from all levels of the system need to be brought into discussions on how to change practices. Following a series of sessions designed to familiarize provincial education officials and teachers with outcomes from OAA’s pilot assessments of 21st century skills, the EQAD staff worked with participants to develop assessment items for classroom use.

As the first short-term target, teachers designed items for use in monthly tests of student progress. An additional target for the monthly tests was to ensure at least one item per subject would reflect OAA’s approach of assessing 21st century skills embedded in subject curricula. Over time, this latter approach will be scaled up to support regular classroom teaching and learning.

An overarching goal of the workshop was to support teachers to move beyond the textbooks that they currently rely on to consider the curriculum more broadly. As Cambodia shifts away from reliance on rote learning, the teachers themselves need greater familiarity with the curriculum and curricular goals. The OAA assessment task structures provide exactly this facility: Not only do they require students to think beyond routine application of their learning, they model this approach to teachers.

Scaling 21st century skills

The app, Telegram, has allowed EQAD to provide just-in-time materials in their capacity-building activities. Educators can access Telegram easily on their mobile phones, download materials, chat, and send all sorts of documents and images, and thereby engage in a dynamic community characterized by quick interaction. As can be seen in the below images from the workshop, the phones provided an essential resource—unlike in many gatherings where individuals looking at their phones indicates disengagement. It was great to see the start of basic information and communications technology literacy in a Cambodian education context.

The Provincial Office of Education (PoE) staff and school directors, together with the Teacher Training Department and Primary Education Department, developed action plans to enable continuing technical item development for the school-based groups after the workshop. The plan is for the four pilot schools that participated in the OAA initiative to scale up to additional grade levels, with EQAD support, as their confidence and expertise builds. To support these activities, the schools will meet in their technical groups, one in Phnom Penh and one in Kandal Province, each month. The Telegram exchange of documents and sharing of resources will facilitate EQAD’s review of item drafts for use in the classroom as teacher expertise develops.

EQAD’s plans to share OAA procedures and practices with teacher training centers in other provinces and institutes so that both trainers and trainees can continue to build knowledge around concepts of 21st century skills assessment and incorporate it into teaching and learning. In the immediate future, EQAD will also scale up to two schools, Chaktomok Primary School in Phnom Penh and Takhmao Primary School in Kandal province. These schools will join the original four to work together to share knowledge and practices.

In many countries, we see responsibility for educational assessment separated across departments or centers, such that responsibility for large-scale testing is taken by one department, and responsibility for classroom-based assessment is taken by another. EQAD has acknowledged the importance of alignment between these different levels of assessment, and while responsible for Cambodia’s large-scale assessment, also values classroom assessment as the foundation for change in education practices. With EQAD’s work to create alignment throughout the system, as demonstrated by the workshop, the future of Cambodia’s education system looks bright.

       

The sudden surge of cases stoked growing fears among a nervous Egyptian public of a much larger number of infections than their government has either detected or declared.

From online classes to warnings against xenophobia — and at least one "COVID-cat" — here's how schools are coping with the global health crisis.

(Image credit: LA Johnson/NPR)

The University of California, Santa Cruz has fired 74 graduate teaching assistants for their refusal to end a strike. They withheld fall grades in an effort to demand higher wages.

According to the United Nations, 22 countries on three continents have closed schools due to the virus. China by far has the most students affected: more than 233 million.

(Image credit: Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images)

By Esther Care, Alvin Vista, Helyn Kim

Twenty-first century skills (21CS) are now firmly entrenched as learning goals in education systems worldwide, but their actual implementation in teaching and assessment practices is lagging behind. With these learning goals—which prioritize how to get answers rather than just providing a correct response—we are facing new challenges and exploring new solutions.

The report

This report describes the collaborative activities undertaken by the Optimizing Assessment for All (OAA) project at Brookings with three countries in Asia—Cambodia, Mongolia, and Nepal—to create 21CS assessment tasks. OAA and partners worked with the countries to identify the 21CS skills that countries value, hypothesized what these skills might look like in classroom assessment tasks, and developed and piloted these tasks to ensure that teachers can use them in classrooms.

The mechanics of the activities are described in detail to illustrate the methods used in the OAA project and by the countries. Comprehensive descriptions of work over a 20-month period from 2018 to 2019 include multicountry workshops, individual in-country workshops and convenings, regional meetings hosted by the Network on Education Quality Monitoring in the Asia-Pacific, virtual communications, and maintenance of an online platform for document sharing and management.

Frequently, assessment studies focus primarily on the tools or tests. For the OAA project, the primary focus was on the process: How do you develop tasks that reflect current curricula and that integrate 21CS into teaching and learning practices?

From this process, it became clear that rethinking the classroom culture is necessary. Concerns expressed during pilot task implementation highlight some of the complexities associated with collaborative work, about not always prioritizing correct answers, and about building knowledge together.

The OAA initiative took just one step in the process of integrating 21CS into the curriculum. The development and introduction of assessment tasks in the classroom is a disruptive force acting as a lever for change. The challenge will be how to deal with that force adaptively.

Download the full report>>

Photo credit: Preah Norodom Primary School, Cambodia

       

One of the first schools to close in Germany because of a student's possible link to the coronavirus, is also the one attended by the children of NPR's Berlin correspondent.

I had made it from Mexico into an elite American university, but it didn’t change my place in American society.

NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with Denise Juneau, superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, about how schools are preparing for future potential spread of the novel coronavirus.

A broad coalition of student loan advocates is urging the U.S. education secretary to make good on federal legal protections for student borrowers with severe disabilities.

(Image credit: Alex Brandon/AP)

Schools in the Puget Sound region of Washington state are taking a number of precautions given the coronavirus outbreak there. Some are closing; others are disinfecting buildings.

Attorneys for three female high school athletes in Connecticut have filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop transgender athletes from running track events against their clients.