Education has had a fairly big year in 2016, but that does not mean that all of the news surrounding this subject matter has been of the positive variety. There has been good news, yes, but there has also been bad news as well as news that even the most qualified of people cannot label good or bad at this point in time.
Luckily, The Washington Post has compiled the best and the worst education related news so far this year. With this compilation serving as a basis, it looks as though things have been looking promising these past six months.
The first of the good news was when a major effort to dissolve teachers' union in the United States was thwarted by the Supreme Court when they deadlocked in the Friedrichs case. The Gates foundation also admitted their mistakes in various "strategic mishaps" and now plans to make some very welcome changes. Two other pieces of good news were when a California appeals court overturned the Vergara decision and when Supreme Court refused to weaken the efforts of educational institutions to promote diversity among their students.
Changes in the GED have also been made after a previous referendum to it led to disastrous results. Research also shows that ethnic studies have helped students become more academically active and could pave the way for it to be implemented in more schools. The results of the Every Student Succeeds Act have still yet to be fully visualized so it cannot be called a success nor a failure.
However, bad news can almost never be avoided, as nine people were killed in Mexico during demonstrations against educational reform. The issue of the poor physical state of Detroit schools has also not been settled as of writing this article. Six million kids have also been found to be missing 15 or more school days every academic year, according to reports from KPCC.
