Parents

John McLaughlin, Ph.D. joined me for coffee to discuss recent news and research pertaining to the ever-challenging dropout issue facing public education in the U.S. McLaughlin breaks down his interpretations of the findings and sheds light on the issue of suspensions and the role they place in disengaging students from the school community. We also learn more about John’s affinity for tea as opposed to coffee too!

First some background. When I was eleven I was given an IQ test. I must have passed since I was sent to a different kind of school, than most of my classmates. This was post-war England and someone in the British Government had woken up to the fact that Britain had lost an enormous number of men between 1914 and 1945 and urgently needed to train replacements.

John McLaughlin, Ph.D. joined me for coffee to discuss Autism screening and the recent article in TIME about when parents should have their children evaluated. McLaughlin also discusses the efforts of communities to spread awareness through campaigns and the struggle so many are having to effectively reach audiences representing increased funding, new research and options for treatment. He specifically talked about the effective campaigns for the Dyslexia and Autism communities respectively and openly discussed his belief that society is struggling with the pathology of individualism. Learn more from our coffee session below! 

By Bill Bush If the state of Ohio’s transition to new proficiency tests didn’t kill the “parent trigger,” it’s put it on life support. The GOP-backed law that created the …

By Deborah Ziff

Get them while they’re young: A baby forms 700 new neural connections per second.By Peter CoyBrain science and economics show that intervening to help children when they’re very young is more cost-effective than waiting until they’re in school. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Bridgespan Group and the Pritzker Children’s Initiative. The report’s lead author, J.B. Pritzker, is an entrepreneur and philanthropist; his sister, Penny, is the U.S. secretary of commerce.

The ups and downs of gentrification have been chronicled thoroughly, but one of its consequences hasn’t been widely addressed: the effect on neighborhood schools when a critical mass of well-educated, well-off people move in. Gentrification usually brings some benefits with it to a neighborhood, such as more attention from the city—as Spike Lee noted, suddenly the trash gets picked up! But does an influx of children from wealthier families make a positive difference to local public schools?

Ron Turiello’s daughter, Grace, seemed unusually alert even as a newborn.At 7 months or so, she showed an interest in categorizing objects: She’d take a drawing of an elephant in a picture book, say, and match it to a stuffed elephant and a realistic plastic elephant.At 5 or 6 years old, when snorkeling with her family in Hawaii, she identified a passing fish correctly as a Heller’s barracuda, then added, “Where are the rest? They usually travel in schools.

B urck Smith, CEO at Straighterline, discusses his approach to solving the skyrocketing cost of college with low-cost online courses built to transfer to over 90 accredited colleges.  Smith, along with nearly 900 participants, including some 250 global education companies, was in New York for the BMO Capital Markets 15th Annual Back to School Education Conference. Dr. Berger, in collaboration with MindRocket Media Group and edCircuit captured views from business leaders to investors taking a look behind the scenes of investment in education and technology.