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Parent and child sorting coins into three jars, financial literacy lessons
InformED ReportK-12

InformED Report: Five Financial Literacy Lessons Parents Should Teach Their Kids

by EdCircuit Staff
written by EdCircuit Staff 5 minutes read

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 37 (1 minute 24 seconds)

The InformED Report: Episode 371 min 24 sedCircuit on Vimeo

The InformED Report for May 26, 2017 covered three things schools and families were trying to teach outside the usual subjects. Financial journalist Beth Kobliner argued that money lessons can begin at age three, and a Massachusetts high school had spent nine years giving 11th graders a full day of practice with household budgets. A survey found nearly 40 percent of responding U.S. colleges seeing fewer international applications, while the United Kingdom worked to attract those students. The edition closed in San Antonio, where nature-based programs were getting young children outdoors.

In this edition

  • Beth Kobliner told St. Louis Public Radio that children understand basic money ideas such as exchange and value by about age three.
  • Chicopee Comprehensive High School had run a Financial Literacy Day Challenge for 11th graders every year for nine years.
  • Nearly 40 percent of responding U.S. institutions in a survey of 250 schools reported a drop in international applications, especially from the Middle East.
  • The UK planned student-friendly programs for international students, who were estimated to contribute £25.8 billion to its economy.
  • San Antonio nature schools and play spaces were giving young children unstructured time outdoors.

Financial literacy starts at home, and at school

St. Louis Public Radio’s Kelly Moffitt reported on Beth Kobliner’s appearance on St. Louis on the Air, where she discussed her book “Make Your Kid A Money Genius (Even If You’re Not).” Kobliner said research shows that by age three children understand basic money concepts such as exchange and value, and that by three to five they can grasp needs versus wants. Her five lessons for parents were practical: do not co-sign a credit card for a child, treat allowances as optional but consistent and separate from chores, begin talking about college costs around eighth grade, keep after-school jobs to about 15 hours a week during the school year, and practise saying no at the checkout line. She argued that these conversations matter more now that so many transactions happen online.

WWLP’s Sy Becker showed a school taking up the same task with older students. For nine years, Chicopee Comprehensive High School in Massachusetts had set aside a full day for its 11th graders, called the Financial Literacy Day Challenge. Students worked through a household budget: paying a mortgage and grocery bills and, looking further ahead, the cost of day care. School administrator Kara Blanchard said she wished her own generation had had that kind of preparation.

Together, the two reports made the case for starting early and returning to the subject often. A single day in 11th grade is a modest dose, and Kobliner’s advice depends on families who have the time and confidence to follow it. Schools that pair one practical event with short, regular lessons in math or social studies give every student the basics, whatever is taught at home.

International students and the competition for them

U.S. News’ Lauren Camera reported early findings from a survey of 250 American colleges and universities. Nearly 40 percent of the institutions that responded reported a drop in applications from international students, particularly from the Middle East, and declines were also reported for students from China and India at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The figures were initial findings about applications, so they could not yet show what would happen to enrolment in the fall.

Other countries were working to attract the same students. Writing in Mathrubhumi, Dr. T. P. Sethumadhavan reported that the UK government was planning student-friendly programs for international students, and cited an Oxford Economics study for Universities UK estimating that they contributed £25.8 billion to the UK economy, with around £4.2 billion a year in tuition from students outside Europe. For American college leaders, the two stories described one market, in which applicants can choose among several countries and those countries were actively competing for them.

InformED Report spotlight: nature schools in San Antonio

The spotlight went outdoors. In the Rivard Report, Bekah McNeel started from Finland, whose high schoolers outperform even most of their Scandinavian peers on the Programme for International Student Assessment, and noted that before Finnish children study math, science and reading, they spend time doing something U.S. children do less and less: playing outside. She then described San Antonio programs built around that idea. The Cibolo Nature Center and Farm ran a nature preschool that used the centre’s ecosystems as an extension of the classroom. The San Antonio Zoo’s Zoo School visited animal habitats daily, and Government Canyon State Natural Area offered a play-and-learn area with a limestone “batcave,” stump steppers and a climbing web. The San Antonio Botanical Garden was planning a Family Adventure Garden for nature-based play as part of an expansion.

The programs aimed to build confidence and resilience. Children who learn to climb, explore and manage small risks outdoors, the educators said, become more willing to try unfamiliar things, and parents were drawn back to nature alongside their children. “If the kids don’t go home wet and muddy we didn’t do our job,” said Cibolo’s director of children’s education. These are educators’ aims and observations rather than measured outcomes, but they gave early-childhood leaders a concrete reason to look at how much of the day their youngest students spend outside.

Further reading from that week

Sources

About the InformED Report

The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on May 26, 2017. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

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States rethink their tests: a student fills in a bubble answer sheet that turns into an interactive tablet test
InformED Report

InformED Report: States Rethink Their Tests

by EdCircuit Staff
written by EdCircuit Staff 5 minutes read

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 41 (1 minute 42 seconds)

The InformED Report: Episode 411 min 42 sedCircuit on Vimeo

Changes to the statewide assessment led the InformED Report for April 25, 2017, edCircuit’s short video news briefing for educators. Iowa lawmakers had approved a bill directing the state Department of Education to choose a new test after a federal warning about the existing one, and Nebraska was reviewing proposals from new testing contractors.

The edition also followed a Montana bill that would fund preschool for four-year-olds from lower-income families, and closed with a spotlight on Everybody Wins! Atlanta, a literacy nonprofit marking its 20th year. Together the stories traced how states decide what to measure, which children to serve first, and how communities can add reading time that schools alone cannot provide.

In this edition

  • Iowa’s Senate File 240 directed the Department of Education to seek a new statewide assessment after a federal letter said the current test did not meet requirements.
  • Nebraska was reviewing proposals from new testing contractors, with officials hoping for technology-assisted questions that gauge deeper learning.
  • Montana’s House Bill 563 proposed about $6 million a year for preschool for four-year-olds in families below 200 percent of the poverty level.
  • Spotlight: Everybody Wins! Atlanta marked its 20th anniversary with a goal of putting 20,000 books into children’s hands.

Iowa and Nebraska look for new statewide assessments

Iowa’s statewide assessment question came to a head in the spring of 2017. Federal law, now the Every Student Succeeds Act, requires states to test students in grades three through eight and once in high school with an assessment aligned to state standards. An Iowa task force had recommended the Smarter Balanced Assessment, but a 2017 federal Department of Education letter indicated that the Iowa Assessments then in use did not meet federal requirements, and continued use could have put federal education funding at risk. Lawmakers responded with Senate File 240, which directed the state Department of Education to select an assessment through a new request for proposals rather than adopt the task force’s choice.

As of the Iowa Department of Education’s legislative update of April 7, 2017, the House-amended bill required the request for proposals to be issued by July 1, 2017, with the new test to be given in the 2018-2019 school year. The assessment had to align with the Iowa Core and cover English language arts, mathematics and science, with science tested in grades 5, 8 and 10.

Nebraska was in a similar position. According to the episode, the state was reviewing proposals from new testing contractors, and officials hoped the next tests would include technology-assisted questions that gauge deeper learning, with changes possible as soon as the following year. For district leaders in both states, a change of test means new score reports, possible breaks in trend data and new demands on devices and scheduling, all of which are easier to manage when planned for before the first administration.

Montana weighs state funding for preschool

Montana Public Radio reported on March 17, 2017 that legislators would hear House Bill 563, the Montana Preschool Grant Program, sponsored by Representative Kathy Kelker of Billings. The voluntary program would give grants to school districts to serve four-year-olds from lower-income families, either directly or by working with existing programs such as Head Start. To qualify, families would need to earn below 200 percent of the poverty level, which Kelker put at about $49,000 a year for a family of four. The cost to the state general fund would be about $6 million a year.

Kelker said the program would offer instruction from a qualified teacher with an early childhood background, not day care. Governor Steve Bullock supported the effort, noting that Montana was one of six states providing no state funding for pre-kindergarten. House Education Committee Chair Seth Berglee of Joliet raised concerns about the cost and about the effect on private providers already offering preschool. The debate illustrates the choices any targeted early learning program must make: who is eligible, who delivers the service, and how a new public program fits alongside the providers already in a community.

InformED Report spotlight: Everybody Wins! Atlanta at 20

The edition’s spotlight was Everybody Wins! Atlanta, a nonprofit founded in 1997 as a local affiliate of a national children’s literacy organization. To mark its 20th anniversary, the episode reported, it set a goal of putting 20,000 books into children’s hands across the region and building programs that encourage lifelong learning.

The organization’s best-known model, described by Rough Draft Atlanta in 2010 as Power Lunch, pairs children with trained volunteer reading mentors who visit during the school lunch period once a week and read with the same child all year. Teachers select the children, often students with low reading scores or those learning English. The episode reported that 40 businesses were encouraging employees to volunteer at 10 public schools. For schools, the model shows how a modest, regular commitment from local employers can add consistent one-to-one reading time for the students who need it most.

Sources

About the InformED Report

The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on April 25, 2017. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

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A student in a blue hoodie and gray hat asleep with head down on a yellow desk beside a notebook, plain green wall behind
InformED ReportHigher Education

InformED Report: Many Students Are Underprepared for College Education

by EdCircuit Staff
written by EdCircuit Staff 6 minutes read

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 29 (1 minute 42 seconds)

The InformED Report: Episode 291 min 42 sedCircuit on Vimeo

The InformED Report for March 2, 2017 opened on a gap that every high school and college leader recognizes: students who arrive at college with a diploma but without the skills for college-level work. A Hechinger Report investigation counted more than half a million of them in remedial classes, and economists questioned whether the placement tests that send students there were sorting them accurately. The edition then went to Armenia, where a free after-school network was teaching technology and design, and closed with a record year of giving at Fidelity Charitable.

In this edition

  • A Hechinger Report investigation of 44 states found most public colleges enrolling students not ready for college-level work, more than half a million of them.
  • National Bureau of Economic Research authors put remedial coursework at roughly $7 billion a year and found many students mis-assigned by placement tests.
  • TUMO’s free after-school centres in Armenia taught 3D printing, web design, film and animation, and a new partnership brought the program to army draftees.
  • Fidelity Charitable donors recommended a record $3.5 billion in grants in 2016, including support for preschool scholarships in Michigan.

College students who arrive unprepared

Sarah Butrymowicz’s investigation for The Hechinger Report gathered remediation data from 44 states. Ninety-six percent of the 911 two- and four-year public colleges in the data enrolled students who needed remedial courses, and at least 569,751 students were placed in those classes in 2014-15. At more than 200 campuses, more than half of incoming students took at least one remedial course. The report stressed that the true total was likely higher, because states track remediation unevenly, and that recent high school graduates, not only returning adults, made up much of the count.

A National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Judith Scott-Clayton, Peter M. Crosta and Clive R. Belfield asked whether colleges were remediating the right students. The authors put the national cost of remedial coursework at roughly $7 billion a year and compared it to a costly medical treatment whose value depends on giving it to the people who will benefit. Using administrative data, they found that about one in four test-takers in math and one in three in English were severely mis-assigned under test-based placement, most often placed in remediation they did not need. Adding high school transcript information, such as grades, reduced those errors, and the authors estimated colleges could remediate substantially fewer students without lowering success rates in college-level courses. This is a modelling result from the data the authors studied, and its strength lies in pointing to a better placement rule rather than proving what any one college would see.

For school and district leaders, the two pieces put the transition to college in plain view. A diploma was being read by colleges as a weak signal of readiness, and a single placement test was being used in its place. High schools could help on both sides: by aligning senior-year courses with what entry-level college work requires, and by working with local colleges that were willing to count high school grades in placement decisions.

Armenia’s TUMO: where art meets technology

Al Jazeera’s Rebel Education series visited TUMO, a free after-school centre in Yerevan led by chief executive Marie Lou Papazian. Armenia became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, and Papazian argued that its schools still carried that legacy, lacking creativity, flexibility and problem-solving. TUMO’s answer was a self-directed program in which teenagers choose their classes and build “maker” skills such as 3D printing, web design, film, animation and robotics. The centre was preparing to open its fifth location, in Koghb near the border with Azerbaijan.

The Armenian Weekly reported a new step. A partnership between the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies and Armenia’s Ministry of Defense would let draftees attend TUMO centres twice a week for eight months during their service, studying fields such as computer programming, robotics, digital graphics and digital music composition. The announcement came from TUMO itself, so it described the plan rather than its results. The broader point for educators was the model: a free, out-of-school program could give young people access to technical and creative skills their regular schools did not yet teach.

InformED Report spotlight: a record year at Fidelity Charitable

Fidelity Charitable, an independent public charity, announced in February 2017 that its donors had recommended a record $3.5 billion in grants in 2016, a 15 percent increase over 2015. That came to well over three-quarters of a million individual grants to more than 110,000 charities, and it carried the organization past a goal of $25 billion in cumulative grants over its first 25 years.

Among the donors it highlighted were Dan and Jill Francis, who used their giving account to support Child Care Network, a nonprofit in Southeastern Michigan that funds preschool scholarships for lower-income families facing homelessness or other crises. Fidelity Charitable said their giving had helped 743 children attend preschool, and that the couple planned an annual grant of $100,000 to help the nonprofit expand into two more counties. For anyone who works with young children, the example showed what targeted private giving can do in a community: a steady grant, aimed at families in crisis, helped hundreds of children reach a preschool classroom they would otherwise have missed.

Further reading from that week

Sources

About the InformED Report

The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on March 2, 2017. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

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Frustrated teenager over a heavily erased math worksheet, lacking math skills
GlobalInformED ReportSTEM and STEAM EducationK-12Math Education

U.S. Teenagers Lacking Math Skills

by EdCircuit Staff
written by EdCircuit Staff 5 minutes read

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 24 (1 minute 25 seconds)

The InformED Report: Episode 241 min 25 sedCircuit on Vimeo

When the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment results came out in December 2016, the headline for American schools was hard to soften: U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 31st of the 35 OECD countries in mathematics, and their scores had fallen since 2012. The InformED Report for February 10, 2017 looked at what educators were saying in response. One argument was that the math gap starts long before high school. The other was that districts already sat on the data they needed to act, if they had the time and tools to use it. The edition closed with a scholarship offer for 21 young women freed from Boko Haram in Nigeria.

In this edition

  • U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 31st of 35 OECD countries in math on PISA 2015, and their scores had fallen since 2012.
  • Educators argued that math, like reading, has to start in the early years, and PISA linked preschool attendance with higher math scores at 15.
  • Learning analytics could help districts act on the data they already collect, but teachers and leaders lacked the time to use it.
  • Robert F. Smith offered to pay for the education of 21 Chibok schoolgirls freed from Boko Haram.

U.S. math scores and the case for starting early

The PISA results gave the debate its numbers. American teenagers scored below the OECD average in math, and the gap with high-performing systems such as Singapore, Japan and Estonia had widened. Writing in The Virgin Islands Daily News, John Green argued that the response had to begin with the youngest learners. His case was that schools and families treat early reading as essential but leave early math to chance, and that number sense built before kindergarten shapes how children handle math for years afterward.

Education Week’s Sarah D. Sparks reported a related thread in the same PISA data. Students who had attended preschool tended to score higher in math at 15, and many of the countries at the top of the table invest heavily in early childhood education. Sparks was careful about the limits of that finding. PISA shows an association, not a cause, and the researchers she spoke with warned that it was hard to know which parts of other countries’ preschool systems would carry over to the United States.

For district leaders, the practical point was the same in both pieces. A weak result at 15 is the end of a long chain. Schools that wanted different math outcomes in high school had reasons to look at what happened in pre-K and the early grades: how much time went to number work, how confident early-childhood teachers were with math, and whether families were given ways to practise counting and measuring at home.

Learning analytics and the time problem in K-12

The second story turned from test results to the data schools already collect. In EdTech Magazine, Elizabeth Combs argued that learning analytics could point teachers and district leaders to where students needed help. Too little of that data reached the classroom, she said, because educators simply lacked the time to find relevant research and pull out the figures that mattered to them. Turning those figures into a plan for a school was harder still.

Her answer was support rather than another mandate. That meant tools and partners that do the sorting, and research summaries written for the decisions a principal or curriculum director actually faces. The underlying question has not gone away. Most districts gather attendance, assessment and course data every week. Far fewer have the staff time and the clear questions that turn it into changes in instruction.

InformED Report spotlight: an education for 21 Chibok girls

The spotlight went to Nigeria. In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from their school in Chibok. Twenty-one of them were released in October 2016, and The Huffington Post’s Taryn Finley reported that American businessman Robert F. Smith, founder of the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, had offered to pay for their education. Nigerian officials said the young women would study at the American University of Nigeria in Yola. Smith also said he would take responsibility for the education of any other Chibok students who were later freed.

The story was a reminder of why the original attack was aimed at a school. Boko Haram’s name is commonly translated as “Western education is forbidden,” and the Chibok kidnapping became a global symbol of attacks on girls’ schooling. A scholarship could not undo what the students had lived through, but it put the right to an education back at the centre of their story.

Further reading from that week

Sources

About the InformED Report

The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on February 10, 2017. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

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An ornate vintage brass key resting on a modern computer keyboard
Education Policy and GovernmentInformED ReportOnline LearningHigher EducationK-12

Online School Trends

by EdCircuit Staff
written by EdCircuit Staff 5 minutes read

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 19 (1 minute 29 seconds)

The InformED Report: Episode 191 min 29 sedCircuit on Vimeo

Two questions about fairness and quality ran through the InformED Report for January 20, 2017. The first was whether Washington State’s way of funding schools quietly favored wealthier districts. The second was how colleges, as online courses grew, could tell whether those courses and the people teaching them were any good. The edition closed with a doctoral student in Tulsa whose path ran from a Head Start classroom to a national research grant in early education.

In this edition

  • The Seattle Times reported on “stealth inequities” in Washington’s school funding that can send more money to affluent districts for students with the same needs.
  • U.S. News looked ahead to online education trends for 2017, from alternative credentials to artificial intelligence.
  • With an estimated 5.8 million students in online courses, colleges were under pressure to evaluate online teaching well.
  • Emisha Pickens-Young, a former Head Start child, became one of six graduate students nationally to win a federal Head Start Graduate Student Research Grant.

Washington’s “stealth inequities” in school funding

In The Seattle Times, Claudia Rowe examined how parts of Washington’s education system worked against schools in poorer communities. Some of the state’s funding formulas pushed more money to programs in affluent districts than to districts with higher poverty rates, even for students with the same needs. Because the effect sat inside technical formulas rather than in any single, visible decision, the paper called them “stealth inequities,” and low-income communities were pressing for major changes to the system.

Rowe’s account began with a trip. In November 2016, a group of 15 Washington activists, legislators, philanthropists, school officials and policy specialists, brought together by equity advocate Sharonne Navas, flew to Sacramento for a two-day look at California’s effort to overhaul school funding by directing more money to poorer students.

The timing mattered. Washington’s legislature was under a state Supreme Court order, from the McCleary case, to fully fund basic education, so the shape of the state’s funding system was already on the table in Olympia. For district leaders, Rowe’s reporting was a reminder that the fairness of a funding system lies in its formulas as much as its totals, and that a district’s own budget can carry those inequities without anyone choosing them.

Online education in 2017: growth, and the question of quality

Looking ahead to 2017, U.S. News’s Jordan Friedman noted that in recent years more students had enrolled in online courses, more organizations had offered alternative credentials such as digital badges and nanodegrees, and more employers had accepted online degrees. The experts he spoke with expected more online degrees and courses, and suggested artificial intelligence could begin to appear in classrooms. Some cautioned that bringing these tools into teaching would not be easy.

Growth brought its own problem. In EdTech Magazine, Meghan Bogardus Cortez cited the Online Learning Consortium’s estimate that 5.8 million students were enrolled in online courses, and pointed to a report titled “Effectively Evaluating Online Faculty.” Its authors argued that an evaluation method that both assesses and mentors online instructors is vital to a program’s success. The consortium had maintained a set of quality scorecards since 2010, and in December 2016 it added three more, covering course design, instructional practice and digital courseware, one of them developed with the State University of New York’s Open SUNY program.

The same questions applied to K-12. Districts adding virtual courses and blended programs needed a way to judge course design and teaching online, not only to count enrollments. Scorecards of this kind are frameworks built from expert practice rather than proof that a course will raise achievement, but they give leaders a shared checklist for what good online teaching should include.

InformED Report spotlight: from Head Start child to Head Start researcher

Ginnie Graham reported in the Tulsa World that Emisha Pickens-Young, 36, a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa, had been selected as one of six graduate students in the country, and the first ever from Oklahoma, to receive the federal Head Start Graduate Student Research Grant, an award of about $25,000. She had been a child in a Head Start program herself, and the power of a good early education had stayed with her.

Looking back on those early years, Pickens-Young said, “I thought school was a fun place to be.” The grant would support her research in early childhood education, adding to the evidence on programs like the one she attended. Her story was a direct, personal example of what early education programs aim to do: give children a strong start, and open doors that last well beyond the classroom.

Further reading from that week

Sources

  • Claudia Rowe, “‘Stealth inequities’: How Washington’s education system hurts poor schools,” The Seattle Times, January 2017.
  • Jordan Friedman, “5 Online Education Trends to Watch in 2017,” U.S. News & World Report, January 2017.
  • Meghan Bogardus Cortez, “Is Your University’s Online Course Up to Code?,” EdTech Magazine, January 9, 2017.
  • Ginnie Graham, “OU-Tulsa grad student receives prestigious early education grant,” Tulsa World, January 2017.

About the InformED Report

The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on January 20, 2017. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

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