As covered in Part #1, two weeks ago was the New York City Department of Education’s CSEdWeek, which is an extension of their CS4All initiative that they claim “will ensure all NYC public school students learn computer science” and help students develop “computational thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and critical-thinking skills.“ There are a few issues with… Continue reading What Is Computer Science? The DOE Doesn’t Know: CS4All (Part 2)
(This is a guest post by Yiatin Chu, Maud Maron, and Amy Tse, Founding Members of Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curricula and Education, a.k.a. PLACE NYC.) On December 12th, 2019, over 100 parents crowded around lunchroom tables of East Side Middle School to hear State Senator John Liu speak about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal… Continue reading State Senator Speaks On The Future of SHSAT, Screened Schools & G&T Programs
Heading into 2019 and 2018, I wrote about which New York City education issues vexed parents the most based on their post’s popularity. I have another planned for the end of this year: 20 issues for 2020! But, over the past 12 months, there have also been topics that didn’t get the attention they deserved.… Continue reading 10 NYC Education Stories You May Have Overlooked In 2019 – And Why They Matter
“All I need is for the legislature to get out of the way, repeal that law and then hold me accountable for the quality of those schools,” New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza boldly proclaimed on Tuesday, November 19 during a Town Hall meeting in the Bronx. He was referring to the Specialized High… Continue reading Carranza Offers To Accept Accountability…. After He’s Out Of Office?
(This is a guest post by Glenn Fuhrman. Glen is a Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and of the TATE Americas Foundation, and a board member of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.) My mother and my aunt were both public school teachers, as was my… Continue reading Giving Thanks For NYC’s Favorite Teachers
I’ve taken great pride in creating an African American Studies course for my school that explored not simply African American History, but African Americans through the lens of history, the arts, and culture. Gearing up for my third year of teaching this class, I was notified that I was going to teach Latin American Studies… Continue reading The Apollo Video Oral History Project
Computers are fast and stupid, people are slow and clever. This is an axiom that anybody who works with computers must accept in order that computers and people may cooperate effectively. Yet, schools seem to ask students to do tasks to which computers are much better suited, and then let them graduate without ever having… Continue reading Don’t stop them now! Students can learn more than you think
A pair of structural changes, one statewide, one nationwide, have been introduced as part of the ongoing hunt for that magic bullet to cure America’s learning woes. And not a moment too soon. The 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports came out last month. Nationwide, on average, math scores went up for 4th… Continue reading It’s About Time: Education’s Latest Magic Bullets