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5 Steps America’s Schools Must Take to Reclaim its Spot on the World Stage

The United States entered the 21st century as the world’s sole superpower. Our diplomatic strength, military might, financial resources, and technological innovation were, and continue to be, the envy of the world. However, in the crucial area of education, the U.S. lags behind many other developed countries. Although the U.S. spends more per student than almost any other country in the world, international exams have demonstrated that we consistently perform well behind countries such as South Korea, China, Japan, and Finland in the areas of reading and math. Why is it happening and what do we, as Americans, need to …

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Here’s why immigrant students perform poorly

Molly McManus, University of Texas at Austin Immigrant students in the United States consistently perform worse academically than nonimmigrant students. This achievement gap is evident as early as preschool and only grows as immigrant students advance through high school. But, what causes the achievement gap? One notion that fuels anti-immigrant attitudes is the belief that immigrant students perform poorly because of their immigrant backgrounds. This is misguided. As a former teacher and now researcher of immigrant families, I am familiar with concerns about low academic achievement among immigrant students. However, as my work shows, immigrant students face barriers beyond their …

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Girls can have it all: how to stop gender stereotyping in schools

Athene Donald, University of Cambridge Few things make us as competitive as getting our children into the right school. That is why families are willing to spend so much money either moving house to get into a good state school’s catchment area or sending their children to a fee-paying school. But the vast majority are stuck with the local school, good or bad. So how can we create a level playing field for students? Unfortunately, it seems we are still a long way away as too many teachers continue to exhibit a tendency towards gender stereotyping by making assumptions about …

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Male graduates earn more than female graduates: study

Alexandra Hansen, The Conversation Male university graduates earn more than their female counterparts and the pay gap will likely increase with the more time spent in the workforce, according to new research. A study by Graduate Careers Australia found an aggregate gender wage gap of 9.4% in favour of male graduates, which decreased to 4.4% when allowances were made for controls such as the courses studied by males and females. This means more males enrol in courses with higher earnings such as engineering, whereas humanities, which provide less monetary return, are studied mainly by women. However, the 4.4% gender wage …

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What fewer women in STEM means for their mental health

Jennifer Drake, University of Toronto “You’re in engineering!?! Wow, you must be super-smart…” It has been over 10 years since I was a first-year engineering undergraduate student; but when I remember the time a fellow female student made this comment, I can still feel a visceral, bodily reaction: my muscles tense, my heart rate increases, my breath quickens. Comments like these on the surface appear as compliments. But when unpacked, they reveal subversive attitudes about women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). As I think back to this encounter, there are two aspects that stay with me. First was …

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Online students need more face-to-face time, not less

Shanna Smith Jaggars, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University and Thomas Bailey, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University Higher education, we’re told, is rapidly heading towards huge transformation and technological disruption. Advocates of online education promise that advances in online learning technologies – by permitting course enrolments in the tens of thousands and leveraging crowd-sourcing for peer review — will make a high quality, low cost higher education accessible to any student. In the meantime, in the US and elsewhere, universities and colleges are swiftly expanding their offerings of what one might call “old-fashioned” online courses: …

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The covert racism that is holding back black academics

Kalwant Bhopal, University of Southampton Students are walking out in protest against racial inequality and injustice in the US and have been rallying together in days of action at campuses across the country. The #StudentBlackout movement has challenged and confronted white supremacy and anti-black attitudes on university campuses, and has made demands for more black and minority ethnic faculty members. So it is ironic that the US is the destination of choice for British black and minority ethnic academics who feel worn down by incidents of racism, exclusion and marginalisation in Britain. Recent research that I worked on, published by …

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Fostering Global Citizenship through Skype

Guest post by Sarah Byrne CHAT to the Future is a growing registered charity based in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada committed to education, global citizenship, and ending the cycle of extreme poverty. They unify these three concepts through the integration of technology into the lives of North American students. CHAT itself stands for Care and Hope through the Adoption of Technology. CHAT runs a small orphans’ home in Kasangati, Uganda and uses the power of North American schools to fully fund everything from rent to education.   The real power in what CHAT does comes from Skype and their …

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