At #CUBE22 conference, Dr. McKnight is interviewed by Alex Lopez about the importance of racial equity in education. "There's no more important goal than achieving equity in education.” https://t.co/nSUOzUrTXh @NSBAPublicEd pic.twitter.com/TybWmDh6xV
— MCPS (@MCPS) December 8, 2022
According to a statement from the principal, the student was showing off the loaded BB gun to a friend while in her 7th-grade classroom, when it accidentally discharged and struck her friend in the thigh.
The classroom teacher immediately called school administrators and security, who confiscated the BB gun and removed both students from the classroom.
The school nurse examined the student who was shot and found no injury...
7th grader shot in thigh by classmate with BB gun in Silver Spring (msn.com)
APM Reports found that the controversial educational publishing company has sold instructional materials and professional resources in almost every state, earning at least $1.6 billion over a decade.
Teaching children to read is not just a critical piece of elementary education. It’s also big business.
In 2019, school districts spent more on English language arts programs for elementary schools than on all instructional materials for middle and high schools combined, according to the Association of American Publishers, an industry trade group. That year, school districts spent $1.33 billion on reading programs for kids in pre-K through sixth grade.
Heinemann Publishing — which puts out curricula by Lucy Calkins, and Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell — has been among the largest players in that market. What hasn’t been clear is just how much money Heinemann earns and how widespread its products are. That’s what APM Reports wanted to find out...
...Much of that money comes from districts across the country. APM Reports sent records requests to the largest school districts in every state — 100 districts in total — asking if they had purchased materials from Heinemann in the past decade. We obtained records for 87 districts. All but five said they’d purchased Heinemann materials...
...But most controversially, some of the books and curriculum have perpetuated a theory that’s commonly referred to as cueing. The theory holds that students can be taught to problem solve unknown words with multiple sources of information, like context and picture clues. It’s a strategy that cognitive scientists have refuted in repeated studies. Other publishing companies put out programs based on this theory, but Heinemann’s products are among the most popular...
Heinemann’s billion-dollar sales have nationwide reach | APM Reports
Fall 2022 marks the start of the fourth school year affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has spotlighted the importance of indoor air quality in schools. Ideally, all school buildings would have adequate ventilation, filtered air in each classroom and windows that open. Sadly, this is not the case – and indoor air quality in many schools is poor as a result. This is especially problematic in the wake of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s August 2022 COVID-19 guidance for schools, which scales back other measures for limiting transmission, such as masking, testing and quarantining.
Beyond minimizing COVID-19 transmission, indoor air quality also matters for student academic performance. This is especially important given the learning losses that many children experienced in the first two years of the pandemic. Hot, stuffy classrooms make it harder for students to learn. So do cold classrooms.
Our research focuses on indoor environments and health – an area that has received increased attention during the pandemic, since most COVID-19 transmission occurs through shared air indoors. There is ample evidence that smart investments in school buildings can reduce transmission of infectious disease, while also improving learning and increasing well-being for students, teachers and administrators...
And let’s not forget COVID. So we termed this the tripledemic, because of the three different upper respiratory tract environments,” Damiano said during a media briefing Wednesday.
He said that in July and August, most upper respiratory tract infections were due to COVID-19, but that has changed. Now, about 50% of those visits at Silver Spring and Germantown locations are RSV or flu.
“The impact on the emergency room is that the volumes are higher, and as the volumes are higher and we try and see and triage the patients, it also results in longer wait times.”
In the week ending November 26, more than 34,000 positive flu tests were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from labs around the US, as shown in the orange line on the chart below. That’s more positive flu tests than have been reported in any single week during any flu season on record, going back as far as 1997.
The trajectory dwarfs the past six flu seasons, including the relatively bad 2019-2020 one that immediately preceded the start of the Covid-19 pandemic (shown in the black line)...
2022 is the worst flu season in two decades. See the rise in charts. - Vox
Specifically, Howard County Senator Clarence Lam and Delegate Courtney Watson have put forward a bill decreasing Dr. Chen and Ms. McCoy’s terms to two-years. That provision is part of broader legislation – Howard County 10-23 – that reduces the number of elected BOE members from seven members to five and granting authority to the Howard County Executive to appoint two members, based on recommendations from the county’s legislative delegation, beginning in 2024. Under the measure, three of the elected members would be chosen by state Senate districts as opposed to the current system of election by each of the five councilmanic districts and two members would be elected at large or countywide. (The Howard County BOE also has a student member that sixth through eleventh graders elect but the pending bill does not affect that position.)...
"There are so many competing positions out there and pay comes into it," said Jessica Baxter of MCPS.
Full time MCPS psychologists with a master's degree earn from $67,000 to $126,000 per year.
'This is a critical area': Montgomery Co. schools continues to face psychologist shortage | WJLA
The Department of Education is putting a pin in a multimillion-dollar proposed textbooks contract after the Daily News reported that it offered no discount on a bulk order for the nation’s largest school system.
The Panel for Educational Policy was slated to vote Wednesday night on a seven-year agreement with educational publisher McGraw Hill estimated to total $31.7 million — when it was pulled from the agenda just hours before the monthly meeting...
NYC schools pull $31M textbook contract vote after backlash (nydailynews.com)
This Act’s summary description:
FOR the purpose of altering the appointment process, salary authorization process, and terms for commissioners appointed to the Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission from Montgomery County; requiring the County Executive of Montgomery County to appoint one member of the Commission who shall serve as the chair or vice chair of the Commission and chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board; requiring certain public hearings and acceptance of public testimony on each appointment to the Commission from Montgomery County; prohibiting the chair of the Board from engaging in certain employment; authorizing and establishing procedures for the Montgomery County Executive or Montgomery County Council to discipline a commissioner from Montgomery County under certain circumstances; prohibiting a commissioner from Montgomery County from engaging in certain political activities while the commissioner serves on the Commission; prohibiting a former commissioner from Montgomery County from working for certain compensation for a certain period of time after the commissioner leaves office; requiring a commissioner from Montgomery County to complete certain training at certain times; requiring the Board to publish agendas of open meetings along with certain other materials on its website at certain times; requiring the Board to approve meeting minutes in a certain manner under certain circumstances; and generally relating to requirements for the members of the Maryland–National Capital Park and Planning Commission from Montgomery County and meetings of the Montgomery County Planning Board...
Planning Trust and Transparency Act of 2023 | Seventh State (theseventhstate.com)
Those changes meant that 20 of the 41 socially conservative candidates identified by Capital News Service came out ahead in their races, down from 25 right after last month’s election, according to unofficial results posted on the Maryland Board of Elections website.
Still, nearly half of the conservative board candidates ended up ahead in a state where a Democrat, Wes Moore, won the gubernatorial election by more than 30 points to become Maryland’s first Black governor.
Conservatives won school board races throughout much of the state, with the largest number elected in Wicomico County, followed by Harford, Baltimore, Carroll and Washington counties...
Late mail-in vote count topples five conservative school board candidates - Maryland Matters
"I want to speak about something which I think we are all in agreement - and I think it is important to name. After the election when I became privy to more of the Council's inner workings, I was surprised to learn that there are some processes which pre-date our current Council and current outgoing Council leadership that can in some instances remove some debate and decision-making from the public eye...
...I'm speaking about polls taken in various manners, that could be treated with the same finality as a vote on the dais, without as much public debate or oversight..."
..."There were three school incidents, and the law was not followed," she said.
Sartucci referred to the January shooting at Magruder High and November 2021 stabbings at Montgomery Blair and Clarksburg High Schools.
"There was no after-action committee meeting. There was no report done. We basically find the law as written is worthless."
Changes to Maryland law in 2020 require school systems that experience a critical, life-threatening incident to notify the Maryland Center for School Safety no less than 24 hours after the school system learns of the incident...
MCPS explains why it failed to properly report school shooting and stabbings | WJLA
That was the same date and time as the Magruder High School community meeting to discuss the critical shooting incident at the school on January 21, 2022.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Anthony Vittoria ordered the case sealed on Friday. His order means all hearings will be closed to the public and all legal motions will be confidential...
Advocates are hopeful that the anticipated release of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office’s 450-page investigation of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore — along with changes in the makeup of a key Senate committee — mean that this time a bill will pass the General Assembly.
“If this isn’t the year, I don’t know what year is,” said David Lorenz, who heads the Maryland chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
The proposal, known as a “lookback window,” will be paired with legislation to abolish the statute of limitations for civil claims in childhood sexual abuse cases.
Statute of limitations reform promises to be one of the major civil issues for lawmakers when they gather in Annapolis for their 2023 legislative session in January.
“We’re taking this issue very seriously in the Senate,” said Sen. William C. Smith Jr., who chairs the powerful Judicial Proceedings Committee.
In years past, Smith’s committee has been a stumbling block for statute of limitations reform. Maryland lengthened the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse in 2017, granting abuse survivors until their 38th birthday to file claims.
But the law did not apply retroactively, so survivors whose claims were already past the statute of limitations did not get the chance to sue their abusers or the institutions that abetted them.
Lookback window legislation has passed in the House of Delegates repeatedly, but has sputtered in the Senate amid questions about its constitutionality. The 2017 law also included a “statute of repose” that may further insulate institutions from older lawsuits, though advocates for a lookback window say they should still have the chance to bring legal challenges in court.
Del. C.T. Wilson, a Charles County Democrat and childhood sexual abuse survivor, said he has already pre-filed a bill for the 2023 session...
