Class work

Best Education Articles of the
Year: Our 18 Most Popular Stories
About Students and Schools From
2018
By THE 74 | December 19, 2018
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Hockey player and Olympian Alex Rigsby visits
her class of mentees in Alexandria, Virginia.
Rigsby is one of more than 100 professional
athletes who deliver social-emotional
mentorship through the global nonprofit
Classroom Champions. (Photo credit:
Classroom Champions)
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This is the latest roundup in our “Best
Of” series, spotlighting top highlights
from this year’s coverage as well as the
most popular articles we’ve published
each month. See more of the standouts
from across 2018 right here . (You can
get all the latest features, essays, and
videos delivered straight to your inbox
by signing up for The 74 Newsletter )
2018 was a year that kept us on our
toes. From teacher strikes to student
walkouts, Supreme Court stunners,
school shootings, and the midterms,
it’s been a nonstop churn of breaking
news. And none of that even touches
upon the enterprise features and
investigations that have proven to be
most popular and evocative with
subscribers.
So we thought we’d take a moment,
before careening into a new Congress
and the next news cycle, to try to
draw a frame around the year that
was. These were our 18 most popular,
most widely shared, and more
influential articles and videos from
2018 (you can also check out our top
17 articles from 2017):
San Antonio, 78207: In America’s Most
Segregated City, a Radical School Integration
Experiment Designed Around Poverty, Trauma,
and Parental Choice Is Working
Integration: Over several months this
past spring, national correspondent
Beth Hawkins tracked the
groundbreaking integration efforts of
the 78207, the zip code located on the
west side of San Antonio, Texas. It is
the poorest neighborhood in
America’s most economically
segregated city: 91 percent of students
in the San Antonio Independent
School District are Latino, 6 percent
are black, and 93 percent qualify for
free or reduced-price lunch. As Beth
reports, into this divided landscape
three years ago came a new schools
chief, Pedro Martinez, with a mandate
to break down the centuries-old
economic isolation that has its heart in
the 78207. In response, Martinez
launched one of America’s most
innovative and data-informed school
integration experiments.
He started with a novel approach that
yielded eye-popping information:
Using family income data, he created a
map showing the depth of poverty on
each city block and in every school in
the district — a color-coded street
guide comprising granular details
unheard of in education. And then he
started integrating schools, not by
race, but by income, factoring in a
spectrum of additional elements, such
as parents’ education levels and
homelessness. To achieve the kind of
integration he was looking for, he
would first have to better understand
the gradations of poverty in every one
of his schools and what kinds of
supports those student populations
require, and then find a way to woo
affluent families from other parts of
the city to disrupt these
concentrations of unmet need.
Martinez’s strategy: Open new
“schools of choice” with sought-after
curricular models, like Montessori and
dual language, and set aside a share of
seats for students from more
prosperous neighboring school
districts, who would then sit next to a
mix of students from San Antonio ISD.
Read Beth’s immersive profile of the
San Antonio experiment.
A 2018 EDlection Cheat Sheet: Recapping the
70 Candidates, Races & Winners That Matter
Most for American Education Policy
EDlection 2018: Education reform, or at
least some of its more controversial
components, didn’t have the best
midterm night in November. Across
more than 40 states and 70 races, The
74 chronicled key ballot propositions,
state-level majorities and the broader
blue wave that will reshape federal
education policy in 2019. From key
races in California and Wisconsin to
surprising twists in Colorado, Florida,
and Texas, see our complete
breakdown of the 2018 votes and what
it will mean for school policy going
forward.
Photo courtesy Watertown City School District
A New Push for Play-Based Learning: Why
Districts Say It’s Leading to More Engaged
Students, Collaborative Classmates … and
Better Grades
Early Education: After New York State
rolled out new standards that called
for “active, joyful engagement” in its
early-learner classrooms, Watertown
City School District introduced a play-
based curriculum that it will expand
through third grade. Researchers have
known for a while that playtime
shouldn’t stop when children enter
the classroom. In fact, it’s critical to
the cognitive development of
elementary-aged students by building
better thinkers, collaborators, and
creators. And child-directed learning
has been shown to deliver significant
academic gains, according to a study
of three preschool programs in
Washington, D.C. Students who had
been in a formal, traditional academic
environment during preschool earned
lower grades after several years of
schooling than their peers who had
been in preschools where active,
child-initiated learning was more
common, the study found. While play-
based learning can still be a tough sell
as schools face the pressures of
standards and teacher training, Kate
Stringer reports on why some district
leaders and researchers are hopeful
that the pendulum is finally making
its way back toward play for a
school’s youngest learners .