Penn GSE News Archive
Fall Back
Michael Gottfried said COVID-19-related school absences may disrupt all students’ learning. “Part of me is just like let’s just go back to Zoom for everyone,” he said. “I want to be in person more than anyone else. That is, the last thing I want to do is sit on Zoom and teach. So I feel for these kids. But what kind of learning is it going to be without a real fallback plan in place?”
As 9/11 drifts into history, Colorado has no statewide standards on teaching kids about it September 11, 2021
Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher's “Teaching Beyond September 11” curriculum has sparked conversation of the importance of learning about 9/11 in school. Many states, including Colorado, do not have a school curriculum that teaches about the “increasingly distant historic event.” There is hope that students “would understand everything that happened that went into that event taking place and they would work to make sure that event never takes place again.”
New Data Shows Building Knowledge Can Boost Reading Comprehension
Brooks Bowden cautions that while the effect sizes in the ARC Core research study were large compared to studies of older students, there are few similar studies of kindergarteners to provide a basis for comparison.
How do you teach 9/11 to students too young to remember? Philly-area educators tell how they make it real
Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher spoke about “history from the last 20 years that is completely neglected.” The “Teaching Beyond September 11” curriculum “is really speaking to that gap and helping young people understand just how the world has changed as a consequence of that awful day,” she said.
Democrats' free tuition plan could save community colleges at a critical time
Laura Perna spoke about efforts to make community college tuition-free. "There's power in the message that tuition is free. Figuring out how much college costs is complicated," she said.
Understanding the pandemic classroom
Caroline Watts discusses educators’ experiences during the early days of the pandemic, lessons learned and how the classroom might be different in the coming months.
‘I have faith in what I cannot imagine, because I couldn’t have imagined what happened July 11’: Philadelphia Cubans on the hope, stress of island protests
Amalia Daché criticizes people who have blamed the U.S. embargo and not the Cuban government for the crisis in Cuba. “She was shocked to see how the U.S. media and Twitter were taking Afro-Cubans out of the narrative and blaming the U.S. and the CIA for the demonstrations,” she said.
Teachers are leaving the profession due to COVID-19 stresses
Richard Ingersoll comments on teachers leaving the profession if the economy continues to improve and they continue to feel stress. “Typically we find that employees across the economy tend to quit less during economic downtimes,” he said. “There’s a lot of indications that in fact, during the pandemic, teacher turnover and teacher retirements may have even gone down.”
New study shows Latinx students attend class more if the teacher is Latinx
In new research published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Professor Michael Gottfried, along with J. Jacob Kirksey (Texas Tech University) and Tina L. Fletcher (Penn GSE), concluded that Latinx students with Latinx teachers attend school more, a relationship that does not exist for white students.
Thousands of kindergartners didn’t show up for school last year. Here’s what that means for the school year to come.
Brooks Bowden comments on the amount of work that needs to be done before and after school reopen for the fall. “We’ve all got a lot of work to do,” she said. Bowden thinks “educator coaches, tutoring services, and supports for families can go a long way.”
Hand in hand: Black women in pursuit of the Ph.D.
Trina and Tina Fletcher are 35 year old twins, originally from a rural town in Arkansas with just 850 people. They are also highly successful African American women who, from an early age, had their eyes set on earning a Ph.D. and changing the world around them. Trina is currently an assistant professor of Engineering and Computing Education at Florida International University, and Tina is a Ph.D. candidate in educational policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
For adults returning to college, ‘free’ tuition isn’t enough
Laura Perna spoke about accommodating the needs of adult students. “There is a complexity to adult learners,” she said. “It is really recognizing, ‘What are the circumstances of individual people’s lives?’ If someone is to enroll in college, how do you make it possible for them to attend?”