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How one city closed the digital divide for nearly all its students

The Hechinger Report

Ramos would connect to the library’s Wi-Fi — sometimes on her cellphone, sometimes using her family’s only laptop — to complete assignments and submit essays or tests for her classes at Skyline High School. Ramos’ parents promised to buy her a laptop eventually, but bills mounted and it wasn’t in the family’s budget.

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Does the future of schooling look like Candy Land?

The Hechinger Report

At first glance, the binders incorporating a whole year of learning at the Parker-Varney elementary school in Manchester look a little like Candy Land, the beloved game of chance where players navigate a colorful route past delicious landmarks to arrive at a Candy Castle. Lillian Pace, vice president of policy and advocacy, KnowledgeWorks.

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Trying to improve remote learning? A refugee camp offers some surprising lessons

The Hechinger Report

They didn’t have a high-tech classroom with fancy equipment — in fact most students didn’t even have laptops or access to the internet. For example, the focus of last summer’s global virtual camp was leadership and advocacy through the power of storytelling. They had something more important: basic digital literacy.

Learning 143
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A Tiny Microbe Upends Decades of Learning

The Hechinger Report

Blaney Elementary School in Elgin, S.C., At Miami Northwestern Senior High School, Julian Negron, left, and Jerrell Boykin, right, load laptops for distribution to students, on March 30, 2020. What works for a high school in a major urban area may not fit the needs of a rural elementary school. on March 18, 2020.

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State Spotlight: Texas’ Student-Centered Response to COVID-19

ExcelinEd

Last week , Excel in Ed hosted Commissioner Morat h and Jennifer Esterline , founder and director of Educate Texas’ Texas Education Grantmakers Advocacy Consortium , for a deep dive into about the state’s COVID-19 strategy and approach.? ? . Texas schools are facing two challenges that Commissioner Morath focused on: .

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Is repeating third grade — again and again — good for kids?

The Hechinger Report

Thousands of Mississippi’s third graders will sit in front of computers later this month to take the statewide reading test, but the eyes of teachers and administrators at Finch Elementary School will be intensely focused on a dozen students at this Wilkinson County school. Sharon Robinson, principal of Finch Elementary.

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Schools in the poorest state become even poorer

The Hechinger Report

. — This fall, students at Enterprise Attendance Center in the small city of Brookhaven may get to draw, paint and make crafts in an elementary art class — the first the school has had in 12 years. billion on elementary and secondary education. But the opportunity comes at a cost: larger class sizes for third-graders. Not anymore.