Weekend reads: In the face of a school budget crisis, a call for more…cursive instruction?

  • The Schools of Opportunity project’s Carol Burris and Kevin Welner praise a Jefferson County, Colo., school for its model of student-directed learning projects. (Answer Sheet)
  • It’s the five-year anniversary of the Common Core, and to one reporter covering the shifting political winds around the standards, those years feel much longer. (Curriculum Matters)
  • Philadelphia’s city council passed a resolution urging the school district to mandate the teaching of cursive, prompting criticisms that the city should focus on the school budget crisis instead. (Metro)
  • Email correspondence between Jeb Bush and the U.S. Department of Education show that the former Florida governor offered to help the Obama administration re-authorize No Child Left Behind. (Buzzfeed)
  • The stress that accompanies poverty can be just as harmful to young children’s developing brain as drug or alcohol abuse. (New Yorker)
  • Many experts believe that teaching nonacademic skills is vital to ensure students’ success, but there’s far less agreement on what those skills should be called. (NPR Ed)
  • In California, parents say they are using the threat of the parent trigger law to prompt changes in schools rather than voting to turn a school over to a charter manager. (Hechinger Report)
  • Alexander Russo rounds up the different attitudes towards charter school backfill that the most prominent advocates, researchers, school districts and charter networks are taking. (The Grade)
  • The solution to educational inequity isn’t giving poor students more technology, one writer argues; it’s giving them more high-quality time with adults. (The Atlantic)
  • When a parent feels a teacher is bullying their student, it can be hard to separate perceptions on both sides from reality, but there is some recourse. (Voices of San Diego)