#110 - Your School District Is Awful...or not?

Show Notes: During today's show, we discuss the following topics during our first segment: From the New York Times (linked below), the way schools are evaluated may be changing. We discuss how a new study shifts how we look at "underperforming" schools. This study suggests that policy makers and education leaders may be thinking about student outcomes in all the wrong ways! In our second segment, we have two very special guests to discuss Social Emotional Learning and a program they created called "TEAMology." Resources Mentioned/Referenced: How effective is your school district? A new measure shows where students learn the most TEAMology Invent Penn State backs TEAMology with $75,000 award from Fund for Innovation TIME: Betsy Devos: The Biggest Controversies from year one Devos reverses policy on campus sexual assault investigations Ed Dept says it will scale back civil rights investigations Betsy Devos wants to spend millions on school vouchers. Two new students say they don't actually work A raw deal from Betsy Devos For-profit college regulations Devos Forcing scammed students to repay loans for meaningless degrees Devos has 10 boats, two helicopters, a yacht scheduler and a lifestyle that you can't afford ($580m in assets) The Polarizing Pick to be Betsy Devos' right-hand man Students boo Betsy Devos as commencement speaker at HBCU Republican Tax plan is an early christmas gift for Devos family (Senator Toomey inserted amendment that exempts schools that don't accept federal funds from being taxed on their endowments) Guest Information: Tonight we have two guests who are experts in Social Emotional Learning and building Character in our young students. Students who rank higher on the Social Emotional Learning scale have demonstrated they are more successful students, as they demonstrate higher levels of skills such as problem solving, resiliency, and leadership, they are shown to score higher on tests, attend school more regularly and become more valuable assets to future employers and society. Linsey Covert is a former teacher and school counselor and now instructor in the Penn State College of Education. As a graduate student, she saw a need for a practical solution to help students develop better relationships and life skills for a more successful future. She began developing ideas for Project TEAM over a dozen years ago and is now the director of Project TEAM, a school-wide anti-bullying movement developed at Penn State to help schools evolve into TEAM-oriented climates. She founded TEAMology, which under license from the university, began recently spreading the SEL and Character Foundations to schools throughout the region by launching a cloud based platform allowing teachers to easily access research based SEL curriculum, track progress, earn badges in SEL, and most importantly communicate, collaborate, and support one another. Linsey is joined by Lisa DiBernardo, who not only taught these skills successfully to students in NJ for 6 years, and won awards, she joined the TEAMology movement as an Education Director and has been largely credited with helping 1,200 teachers and now 14,000 students improve their Social, Emotional and Character skills.