» 2009 » OctoberAccording to a Pew Research Center report released this week, women constitute 53 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college. In this age group, women have been the majority of college students since 1987. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 42.3 percent of women and 37 percent of men are enrolled in college. Among college students of all ages, the U.S. Census Bureau reports [...] Nicholas D. Kristof, columnist for the New York Times, writes that approximately 20 schools could be built in Afghanistan for the same cost as stationing one soldier there for a year. If only U.S. schools were that cheap. Roughly 130 schools could be built in Afghanistan for the same cost as building one elementary school in the U.S. Girls, on average, are better readers than boys in every country in the world. The UK is no exception. The Daily Mail reports that roughly 25,0oo UK boys aged 14 have the reading age of a nine-year-old. It will be extremely difficult for these boys to catch up. The article: Secondary schools were also given ‘books for boys’ including spy novels and [...] Something magical is happening at the Largo Kumon Center located in Largo, Maryland: students are studying beyond school grade level and actually enjoying it. Not surprisingly, their parents have great things to say about Kumon. One mom, Sandy Frazier, said: “Kumon gave my son the challenge that he needed. He wasn’t challenged in school. I started [...] The U.S. is falling behind the world in math. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “We are lagging the rest of the world, and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways.” A special analysis put out by the National Center for Education Statistics found that the math performance of U.S. high schoolers was in the [...] Hundreds of teachers have complained to Education Secretary Arne Duncan about the inadequate training they’ve received from education school programs. Specifically, teachers are not being prepared to deal with classroom behaviors. I’m not surprised. While earning my Master of Education degree, the only training we received in the area of classroom behaviors was a brief class wherein [...] Dr. Don Klinger, associate professor of education at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada is trying to figure out why boys, on average, do not read as well as girls. For the past two years, he has been researching the reading gender gap in Ontario as part of a project with the Education Quality and Accounting Office, [...] A major problem facing Taiwan is that boys there do not perform nearly as well as girls in reading. As an educational researcher, I have been trying to understand why. Taiwanese students earn scores among the highest in the world in science and math, though they do not perform as well, as a whole, in reading. [...] Recently I was invited to observe classes at two public elementary schools in Taiwan: Dan Fong Elementary School and Affiliated Experimental Elementary School of Taipei Municipal University of Education (ESTMUE). Dan Fong Elementary is located in Taipei County. With more than 2,000 students, it’s considered a middle-sized elementary school in Taiwan. Some Taiwanese elementary schools—such as Kuanghua [...] In his latest column for the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman argues that fixing our failing public schools will help end the Great Recession. The key, according to Friedman, is to strengthen the American worker’s global competiveness by teaching our students to think more creatively. From Friedman: A year ago, it all exploded. Now that we [...] The good news is that reading scores for 9- and 13-year-olds are the highest ever according to results recently released from the 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The bad news is that boys trail girls in reading performance at all age levels. The gap at age 9 is 8 points, at age 13 is 8 [...] New math results on the most important nationwide math test show only 39 percent of fourth graders and 34 percent of eight graders scored at or above the proficient level. Most students do not have the knowledge and skills commensurate with their grade level. These results aren’t surprising considering the fact that many U.S. schools are [...] On international assessments of educational performance, Japan is one of the top performing countries in science and math. The two primary international assessments that examine the performance of students in science and math are the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The former assesses science and math [...] I recently had the opportunity to visit a Japanese school. Kadena Elementary School is located on Okinawa Island in the town of Kadena, and is not to be confused with the school of the same name operated by the U.S. Department of Defense Dependents Schools. The purpose of my visit was to research successful practices of [...] As early as kindergarten, a gender gap in academic achievement is evident in American schools. Girls are excelling; boys are underachieving. The longer students are in school, the wider the gap becomes. Boys’ academic performance relative to girls has been plummeting for decades. Boys are more likely than girls to earn poor grades, be held back [...] |
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