TALAS E-newsletter – December 16

Last year, the state of Texas got a failing grade when it came to teaching public school students about climate change. A report by the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund found that the state’s current science education standards don’t meet key, basic criteria about climate education: Teaching students that climate change is real, that it’s caused by humans burning fossil fuels, and that the effects of climate change will be catastrophic.

English language learners are drastically under-represented in the nation’s gifted and talented elementary education programs. And the one tool advocates hoped would better identify them — non-verbal assessments — hasn’t worked, critics say.

Experts say teachers have not been adequately trained to spot these students’ gifts and that schools’ failure to recognize and grow their talent could turn them off to school entirely.  

The amount of student loan debt in the United States is $1.8 trillion — and counting. Education has never been more expensive.

The student loan crisis has affected a lot of students, but statistics show that it disproportionately affects the Latino community.

I will never forget sitting down with Elijah when school began last year. As a 5th-grader, he didn’t understand the concept of multiplication.

I started at the beginning, teaching him that any number multiplied by zero is zero. Then, I taught him that any number multiplied by one is that number, one group of five or five groups of one is five, and so on. I made no judgments. I never made him feel like it was his fault. Eventually, he started to get it. He knew I invested in his learning, so he became invested, too. Pretty soon, Elijah was bragging to other teachers, “I know multiplication!”

Black and Latino students are still more likely than their peers to have teachers with one year or less of experience in the classroom, despite years-long federal efforts to change that trend, concludes a new analysis. The disparities are the largest for Black students.

The two reports from the Education Trust, a civil rights group that advocates for more accountability of low-performing school districts, look at data from the U.S. Department of Education’s 2017-18 Civil Rights Data Collection.

Vicente Fernández’s romantic rancheras and timeless folk anthems defined the grit and romance of his turbulent homeland, songs of love, heartbreak and working-class heroes that made him a cultural giant for generations of fans throughout Latin America and beyond.

With his buttery baritone and ornate sombreros, embroidered jackets and slim trousers, he stood as a constant for decades, a source of comfort in good times and bad.

But time finally caught up with a performer who seemed eternal.