Education Briefs July 2016

Education Briefs

According to the March NEA Today, “the number of students who say they will major in education has reached its lowest point in 45 years,” with only 4.2% of students intending to major in education, compared to 11% in 2000. “Enrollment is down 53% over the past five years” in California teacher-training programs. The NEA teachers union claims young people “want to be teachers and union activists.” But National Public Radio reported in March of 2015 that potential teachers are turned off by “an increasingly bitter, politicized environment.” Other reasons for the decline include Common Core and a focus on high-stakes testing.

The board of the Encinitas School District in California, long a hotbed of debate over teaching yoga in schools, will devote $410k to pay yoga teachers. Increased funding angers parents who already lost a lawsuit that attempted to do away with yoga in schools because they believe it has religious implications. This expense is a particularly bitter pill to swallow in a cash-strapped district where parents volunteer to teach art to keep it in the curriculum. One parent says, “Accelerated math is no longer offered, lab science is not offered, reading specialists are funded by parents, music is funded by parents, art is taught by parents.” The Encinitas superintendent of schools serves on the advisory board for the Sonima Foundation, a yoga promoter. (10News.com, 6-21-16)

In a move “spearheaded by environmentalists,” the school board in Portland, Oregon, unanimously approved the removal of all textbooks that leave any room for debate about global warming, which they now call climate change. The resolution calls on the “school district to get rid of textbooks or other materials that cast doubt on whether climate change is occurring and that the activity of human beings is responsible.” Activists worry when some science textbooks contain “words like ‘might,’ ‘may’ and ‘could’ when talking about climate change.” The district will also develop “curriculum and educational opportunities that address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.” (Portland Tribune, 5-19-16)

The National Association of Scholars’ critique of the College Board’s revised Advanced Placement European History course finds it to be a “hollowed out version of history.” The Disappearing Continent exposes the fact that “the history of religion, the history of liberty, and the history of Britain,” which should be at the heart of the standards, now “get minimal treatment.” (NAS.org, 6-14-16)