What did we learn? Gloria Ladson-Billings is not excited about ‘going back to normal’
December 28, 2020 | By Yvonne Kim, The Cap Times
In April, Indian novelist Arundhati Roy published a series of essays, including one titled “The pandemic is a portal.”
“Nothing could be worse than a return to normality,” Roy wrote in Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”
This idea has been the year’s biggest takeaway for Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emeritus, author and education researcher. The COVID-19 pandemic is a portal, she said, for educators in Madison and across the country to rethink how they teach.
Wisconsin sees 9,600-student increase in homeschooling
December 28, 2020 | By Scott Girard, The Cap Times
The number of students homeschooling this year rose by more than 9,600 after two consecutive years of growth in the hundreds.
The uptick to 26,641 homeschooled students comes as no surprise amid the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has created for education, including some districts remaining entirely virtual while others are entirely in-person.
Madison School District and UW-Madison team up to tackle literacy inequality
December 15, 2020 | By Elizabeth Beyer, Wisconsin State Journal
The Madison School District and the UW-Madison School of Education announced Monday the formation of a joint early literacy task force to analyze teaching methods for reading and make recommendations to the district to reduce achievement gaps. The goal of the task force is to use literacy as a strategy to make sure all district students receive quality grade-level instruction.
We are Listening! RERIC partners with rural Wisconsin
December 11, 2020 | By Lynn Armitage, Wisconsin School News (Wisconsin Association of School Boards)
The Wisconsin Association of School Board’s magazine, Wisconsin School News, profiles UW-Madison’s Rural Education Research & Implementation Center, a first-of-its-kind center in Wisconsin dedicated to improving educational outcomes for rural students, families and schools through rigorous, partnership-based research. Based in the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, the center has identified five urgent research strands to ground its work: mental and behavioral health; teacher preparation, recruitment and retention; STEM education,; equity and diversity and research preparation and training.
WCER Improving Mentoring Relationships for Next Generation of Academic Science Leaders
December 7, 2020 | By Karen Rivedal, WCER Communications
WCER experts Christine Pfund and Angela Byars-Winston are leading a $1.2 million program providing culturally aware mentorship education for dissertation advisers of leading PhD students in the sciences from diverse backgrounds throughout the country. Byars and Pfund also designed leadership training for the mentees, who were selected for research support as future academic science leaders by the renowned Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland.
UW-Madison researcher’s instrument design fuels groundbreaking international study of teaching and learning
November 18, 2020 | By Janet L. Kelly, WCER Communications
This week the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced the findings of the Global Teaching InSights: A Video Study of Teaching, which looked directly into the classrooms of 700 teachers across eight countries and economies to capture on video how each taught the same mathematics topic to their students.
Essential to the study’s success are observation systems designed by Courtney Bell, a principal investigator of the study and a UW–Madison learning sciences professor who directs the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research. In building these systems collaboratively with global teaching experts, Bell’s team created the first standardized observational instruments used to measure the teaching and learning of the same unit of instruction across multiple countries.
Dual VETWAYS studies show social support is key to successful academic outcomes for student military
November 11, 2020 | By Lynn Armitage
The transition from military to college life can be a socially difficult one for military service members and veterans (SSM/Vs). However, members of this unique and talented student population stand a better chance of success when they are supported by a strong network of fellow students, veteran coordinators, faculty or other higher education practitioners, according to two separate reports by the Veteran Education to Workforce Affinity and Success Study (VETWAYS).
VETWAYS is a three-year $556,000 project funded by the National Science Foundation, launched last year at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research in UW–Madison’s School of Education. The project is focused on the college-to-workforce pathways of SSM/Vs from five, four-year University of Wisconsin System institutions: Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, Oshkosh and Stout. In the last academic year, more than 3,000 veterans attended UW System universities.
The promise of quality digital learning for all students
October 30, 2020 | By Lynn Armitage
When Annalee Good, an educational researcher and evaluator from UW-Madison, and her colleagues began studying the use of digital tools in classrooms a decade ago, they never imagined a global pandemic would drive the adoption of at-home online learning at warp speed.
COVID-19 has caused a dramatic, sweeping change to education. Whenever students and teachers fully return to in-person classrooms, school districts must take a critical look at the role of digital tools and decide how to move forward. Schools must be vigilant to ensure their online learning systems contribute to the equitable education and academic outcomes of all students, particularly the historically underserved.
Madison School District should improve communication between 4K, kindergarten teachers, report finds
October 29, 2020 | By Scott Girard
Better communication between 4-year-old kindergarten teachers and their 5-year-old kindergarten counterparts in the Madison Metropolitan School District could improve student outcomes in transitioning to kindergarten, a new report found. A Madison Education Partnership research brief released this month outlines some of the challenges facing teachers during student transitions from 4K to elementary school and offers a host of recommendations to improve.
Americans with lower education levels suffer more pain than people with more education
October 29, 2020 | By JEFF RENAUD, Western News
Americans with university degrees or higher level of education endure substantially less pain than those who are less educated, according to an international study led by Western University. With more than half of U.S. adults reporting chronic pain, the study will help health-care professionals and policymakers better target relief, the researchers said.
“Pain affects quality of life of individuals and their families,” said Western sociology professor Anna Zajacova. “It is an incredibly important health condition that we must try to understand better. And like many other seemingly personal issues, there are powerful social forces driving pain in society. Education is one of those forces.”
Why online school works better for this Madison family
October 26, 2020 | By Michelle Baik
The switch to virtual schooling has been a challenge for many families, but one Madison family has been doing it for years. They say virtual learning works better for them. Ian Santin is a 12th grader at the Destinations Career Academy of Wisconsin, an online school. After attending middle school in the Madison Metropolitan School District, Ian made the switch five years ago. He said his ADHD made it hard to focus in the classroom. Amy Santin says her son is a better student now, due to more flexibility in his five to six hours-long day. She said, “We can provide an environment that’s conducive to him. He can take movement breaks. He’s just a lot happier, and he’s actually started to enjoy learning.”
Wisconsin Partnership Program awards $6 million in community impact grants to health equity programs
October 16, 2020
The Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has announced its 2020 Community Impact Grant awards for initiatives that aim to advance health equity and improve health and well-being throughout Wisconsin. Initiatives that address the health of Black men and women, prevent suicide among Wisconsin farmers and promote economic stability and restorative justice are among the six award recipients.
Cap Times Idea Fest: COVID-19 is a chance to reimagine education, panelists say
October 14, 2020 | By Ben Farrell, Special to the Cap Times
Panelists Gloria Ladson-Billings, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor who taught for 26 years and is now the National Academy of Education president; Carlton Jenkins, the newly hired Madison Metropolitan School District superintendent, and Mary Lee McKenzie, an educator at Clark Community School in Middleton shared their insights on how the crisis can — and perhaps should — lead to a drastic reimagining of what education looks like.
AERA Virtual Awards Ceremony Saturday to Honor WCER’s Good, Cheng
September 29, 2020 | By WCER Communications
Annalee Good and Emily Cheng will be honored in a virtual ceremony Saturday for a paper with Vanderbilt University colleagues that won one of AERA’s 2020 excellence in education research awards. The celebration is open to the public and will broadcast live on ZOOM.
Savvas Learning Company Launches Culturally Responsive Learning Initiative
September 24, 2020 | By Savvas Learning Company
Savvas Learning Company, a next-generation learning solutions provider for K-12 education, is proud to announce the launch of its Culturally Responsive Learning (CRL) Initiative that will focus on supporting teachers in making real changes in their classroom practices to foster student voice and improve achievement as well as using curriculum that opens minds and allows students to see themselves reflected in what they learn.
