During last month’s midterm elections, education reform was a big issue in many races across the nation. The creation of more charter schools is at the core of most “reformist” agendas, but despite many success stories and the attraction to parents of “school choice,” the idea that charter schools are some sort of silver bullet…
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)According to the agenda for 2019 posted on its website, the U.S. Department of Education’s internal watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, will be examining the department’s controversial process for dismissing civil rights complaints. In July, Representative Maxine Waters (D-California) introduced the Education Department Civil…
According to a new study, sign languages can help reveal hidden aspects of the logical structure of spoken language, but they also highlight its limitations because speech lacks the rich iconic resources that sign language uses on top of its sophisticated grammar.The study, published in Theoretical Linguistics, is the culmination of more than eight years…
Telemundo plans to debut an English-language newscast on YouTube in third-quarter 2019. The objective is to reach young, millennial Hispanics with news relevant to the demographic. The platform was chosen because U.S. Hispanics over-index on YouTube, notes Romina Rosado, senior vice president of digital media and emerging business, Telemundo Digital Enterprises. The average age for…
During November’s International Education Week, the U.S. Department of Education released its revised international education strategy, “Succeeding Globally through International Education and Engagement,” which starts with the following paragraph: “Today more than ever, an effective domestic education agenda must aim to develop a globally and culturally competent citizenry. It is not enough to focus solely…
Paperwork Review all of your paperwork with a critical eye, and then go over it again. Bureaucracy is a worldwide phenomenon, but in some countries it is almost an art. When I was studying at the University of Grenoble in France, I had to have five different picture IDs, three of which had to be…
A new study, published in Cognition, suggests that because parents speak to their autistic children using fewer words and less complex sentences than do parents of typical children, the development of autistic children’s language skills may be inhibited. Were this to be proven, it would call into question the common recommendation that parents speak in…
In a recent study, published in Psychological Science, Martin Maier and Rasha Abdel Rahman at the Humboldt University of Berlin examined how native language influences what we consciously perceive. Groups of Greek, German, and Russian speakers (103 people) were shown a rapid series of shapes and were told to look out for a grey semi-circle….
Democratic Assemblyman Tony Thurmond managed to come from behind to emerge as California’s new superintendent of public instruction, beating out Marshall Tuck, a fellow Democrat and former Los Angeles executive of charter schools and educational nonprofits. Thurmond sponsored California Assembly Bill 2514 which was passed in September, allocating $300,000 in grant funding to eligible schools,…