It was her appreciation that impressed me. She was one of the early migrants to Glasgow. She had fled a war zone with her four children. She’d been assigned a flat in a high rise in Easterhouse. She spoke about it as a dream come true. To her it was a palace.

What have we done? That’s what Hawick housewife Carol Martin said when she realised her lottery ticket had scooped £33 million.

How desperate would you have to be to put your child onto a rubber dinghy and wave them off to the mercy of the world? It beggars belief that people are doing it but they are. Some are parents who can afford only one fare so they buy a way out for their child.

Many parents are having to take on a variety of new roles, from playing IT help desk to becoming makeshift teaching assistants to supervising recess.

A severe case of child abuse and torture is bringing renewed attention to the mostly hands-off approach states take with home schooling.

Entrepreneurship education should be universally available, to provide all students with opportunities to explore and fulfill their potential, write Stephanie Bell-Rose and Thomas W. Payzant.

Many programs designed by educational entrepreneurs are rendered ineffective by complications with current public policy, suggests a report published by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

K-12 educational entrepreneurship today is marked by at least three major tensions that deserve a lot more careful attention.

What’s it called?

Moonlight, Film 4, Wednesday, 9pm

News.

Nutrition, sleep, exercise, and avoiding drugs are associated with not just better grades, but higher aspirations for college, a new study suggests

The mental health of school counselors, nurses, school leaders, and teachers are at risk, and they may only need 10 minutes to help alleviate their stress.

School-based health centers can powerfully expand health-care access and support academic achievement, argue John Jackson and John Schlitt.

Online directories for residential phone numbers have morphed into paid-for services that people largely use for background checks. If I just want a phone number, I'm out of luck.

There's a new focus on getting more training to early-childhood educators, but there's a dearth of information about what constitutes a high-quality, teacher-preparation program.

The Center for American Progress has released a set of recommendations for governors in 2019 that includes things such as full-day universal preschool and the study of pre-term births, which can cause learning difficulties.

Half of Americans in 22 states live in "child-care deserts"—places where there are more than three children for every child-care slot—according to a new geographic analysis by the Center on American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Democrat Gavin Newsom, who takes office Jan. 7, plans to expand full-day kindergarten and child-care offerings in the state, according to media reports.

Federal funding for state-administered child-care-assistance programs has declined since 2001, leaving many low-income families struggling to find child care, finds a study by the National Women's Law Center.

Families may be less likely to take advantage of early-childhood education programs if they work nonstandard hours, finds a new report from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families.

Education needs to stop going around in circles, writes Stanford’s Thomas S. Dee.

Investing in early learning makes the biggest impact on a student's achievement, says Marion County, S.C., Superintendent Kandace Bethea. When a teacher is not available, we have to find other ways to get the job done, such as community partnerships.

Waterford UPSTART, an online program that offers literacy and math enrichment lessons aimed at preschoolers, received support from a philanthropy dedicated to funding "bold ideas for social change."

The World Health Organization issued guidelines for children under 5, including its first recommendations on how much time children should be spending in front of a digital screen.

A new report by the Government Accountability Office provides the first comprehensive nationwide look at state early education programs and how they are funded.

Amid the Trump administration's push to slash federal red tape, educators, advocates, and parents tell the U.S. secretary of education they're worried about the effect that could have on historically overlooked groups of students.

In a wide-ranging report on the state of education for ELLs, one theme is consistent: The nation's public schools must devote more resources and research to educating students who aren't native English speakers.

Tax-credit scholarship programs in 17 states collected $1.1 billion in contributions in 2017, a new analysis from the GAO finds.

A textbook is no longer enough in many classrooms, writes Dan McDowell, but finding the right OER materials can be tricky.

The Education Department programs the president wants to consolidate into a block grant deal with English-language acquisition, charter schools, after-school activities, rural education, and more.

Being a school leader is difficult. They are meant to focus on improvement while also negotiating their way through adult behavior. Can leadership coaching help them focus on what truly matters?

The 'Total Physical Response' method to learning vocabulary is beneficial for students, especially English-language learners, to break down and analyze the roots and endings of vocabulary words.

A forthcoming study finds that beginning middle schoolers benefit from two 15-minute writing exercises to boost their sense of social and academic belonging.

News.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan may only have eighteen months left in office—but they're critical months when it comes to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The first season of the Netflix political potboiler was rich with education-policy plotlines, and we're hoping for more of the same.

More than half of the state plans fail to publicly report data on educator equity gaps, the National Council of Teacher Quality found in its analyses.

Marc Tucker responds to Checker Finn's recent critique of the new international teacher quality study from NCEE and Linda Darling-Hammond, Empowered Educators.

40 groups will band together to push principles for "modernizing and elevating" teaching, but many of the groups have contrasting agendas.

This week, you'll hear from guest blogger and longtime reader favorite Heather Harding. Heather kicks off the week by discussing reforms to identify, retain, and prepare high-quality teachers—and why it's still important that we pay attention to these things.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner said that half of Chicago teachers were "illiterate" in a 2011 email, recently released to a city newspaper.

Marc Tucker's most-read blog posts in 2017.

Jose, an Argentinian worker serving in Southeast Asia, tells of how he entered overseas service and what he has seen God do through his not-so-typical ministry.

From age 17, Ana Maria prayed to serve God in Switzerland. While she waited, she became a dance instructor with no idea dance would become her ministry.