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Which states offer the best public educations?
Bambi Majumdar EducationPublic education encompasses the bulk of the education system in the U.S. It is controlled and funded at three levels — local, state, and federal. Funding, school curricula, educational standards, teaching, standardized testing decisions, and other policies differ from one state to the other. Naturally, their performances vary as well. U.S. News & World Report and World Population Review recently released their separate state education rankings. Massachusetts and New Jersey ranked first and second, respectively, on both lists.
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5 free tech tools for the music classroom
Aileen Miracle EducationAre you looking for ways to incorporate technology into your music room? In this article, I'm detailing five of my favorite tech tools — and they are all free! My first tool is the Rhythm Trainer website. It is a fun way to practice dictation and audiation. You can choose the rhythms students know, then students listen to an audio sample and dictate it with those rhythms.
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The best ways to save money for college
Julie Anne Wells EducationCollege not only opens up more job opportunities for young professionals, it also equips them with a unique set of experiences and learning perspectives. It is a fundamental milestone that bridges the gap between childhood and adulthood for millions of Americans every year. But it’s also extremely expensive. If you have a child of any age, you should start planning for their college fund as soon as possible. Here are a few top tips for how to save money for your child’s college education.
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The most important job of a leader
Roberta Matuson Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementWhat do you think the most important job of a leader is? Is it to motivate the team to achieve departmental business objectives? Engage employees to ensure they are highly productive? Drive home business results? While thoseare essential, none are the most important job of a leader. Why? Because a leader cannot accomplish any of this without the right people on his or her team. Therefore, the most critical job of a leader is to hire the right people.
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Why teachers are quitting in droves
Patrick Gleeson EducationAlmost half of all K-12 teachers quit teaching within five years. Those who quit are disproportionately teachers in two of the most critical areas: English or science. Moreover, they quit soonest and most often in high-poverty and urban schools. But neither the federal government nor most state governments have convincingly answered the simple question of why this occurs.
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Artificial intelligence: Coming soon to a classroom near you
Brian Stack EducationAs a child, I was always enamored with books and movies that let me imagine what the future would look like. I wasn’t excited about the idea of traveling on spaceships from planet to planet with the crew on "Star Wars," and I didn’t care so much about flying a car like the people from "Back to the Future 2." Maybe I was afraid of heights. I did, however, love the idea that one day computers would be as smart (or smarter) than humans. That day has been slowly creeping up on us, and we haven’t even noticed.
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How to turn your music classroom into an escape room
Aileen Miracle EducationHave you ever heard about escape rooms in the music classroom and wondered what that would look like? In this article, I'm detailing the why, what, and how of escape rooms! A few years ago, I began hearing of escape rooms for the general classroom, but I first heard about escape rooms specifically for the music classroom from Carrie from the Music Teacher Coffee Talk podcast. I tried one soon after that and fell in love with it!
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Why schools can’t hire enough good teachers
Patrick Gleeson EducationYou've probably read about the awful teacher shortage in this country. School districts just can't get enough good teachers. According to the nonpartisan Learning Policy Institute, for example, in the 2017-18 school year there was a shortage of 110,000 qualified teachers. That sounds pretty bad — but when you consider this is a shortage of 110,000 teachers out of 3.8 million — it begins to appear that the teacher shortage may be exaggerated. Overall, in fact, there is a higher percentage of unfilled U.S. jobs in almost every area of science, technology, engineering and mathematics than in education. So how bad is it, really?
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Exploring the growing trend of K-12 online learning
Bambi Majumdar EducationThe 2019-20 school year in Tennessee started with hundreds of students across the state going back to school virtually. The state’s new online school, the Tennessee Connections Academy, launched recently and is offering K-12 children new options for learning. Tennessee is not the only state to see a surge in K-12 online learning. Education Week reports that over 3 million K-12 students in the U.S. opt for online classes, and the number is growing every day.
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What happened to bilingual education?
Patrick Gleeson EducationDiscussions of the benefits of a bilingual education often emphasize how it improves critical thinking, encourages a wider understanding of others and develops unique problem-solving skills. These are all true, but perhaps the most important aspect for many parents is that bilingually educated children make more money in adulthood. But that being so, why is bilingual education reserved primarily for students who come from money? If bilingual educations aren't distributed evenly across the economic spectrum in this country, one of the reasons is that, historically, many Americans have been somewhat suspicious of teaching their children a foreign language.
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