Education Week - December 11, 2019 - 1

To inspire and empower.

Vol. 39 * Issue 16 * December 11, 2019

edweek.org

Math: The Most Potent Civics Lesson You Never Had
A handful of
educators are
touting the
benefits of
using math to
teach civics,
and vice versa

By Stephen Sawchuk
Elections are all about numbers, sometimes
hinging on miniscule percentage-point differences
in turnouts. Math teacher Alison Strole's middle
school students know this better than your average
American, because they've actually had to wrestle
with the data.
Strole, who teaches in the Hamilton Southeastern
district in Fishers, Ind., requires students to analyze

20 years of exit-poll results-including the 2008 and
2016 presidential elections, where swing states twice
reshaped the national balance of political power. Officially, this is part of her math unit on data analysis
and how to read and interpret two-way data tables, a
component of 7th and 8th grade algebra. In practice
it's also a powerful civics lesson.
As a concluding assignment, students must use the
data they've analyzed to write a paper as if they were
campaign strategists for the Republican or Demo-

cratic party: Which constituency would they target
to win a particular contest?
It's not always an easy activity to teach-most students haven't quite grasped the concept of the electoral college before the lesson begins-but by now it's
so highly anticipated that every fall, students ask Strole
when they get to do "the political party thing."
"Some students have even noticed trends in the
data," Strole said, like the fact that college-educated
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Clockwise from top: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP; Jeff Chiu/AP; Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register/AP

Choice Option
Pushes a District
To the Brink
By Daarel Burnette II
Palmyra, Wis.

A DECADE IN REVIEW
CLOCKWISE: Teacher Denitra Henry, right, assists 2nd
grade student Jayden Bowie, with his computer during

The list of academic and extracurricular offerings at the Palmyra-Eagle school district in
Wisconsin are seemingly endless. Agriculture,
woodshop, and metal classes. Eight AP courses.
A marching band, theater program, and robotics
club. Football and equestrian teams with recent
state championships.
The 600-student district is also on the brink of
bankruptcy and now wants to dissolve.
Over the course of less than a decade, hundreds of
parents in this mostly rural community took advantage of Wisconsin's unwieldy interdistrict open enrollment policy and decided to send their children to
Milwaukee suburban schools just a handful of miles
up the road.
The sudden shift sent its finances into a tailspin
and made the district a cautionary tale for policy-

her math class at Turner Elementary School in

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Washington, in 2017.
Picket signs from at a teacher rally in Oakland, Calif.,
last winter.
Police keep an eye on students as they are evacuated
classroom by classroom from Northwood High School
after someone called in a threat in Irvine, Calif., in 2017.

A Decade of Change for Teachers
By Madeline Will
As the 2010s draw to a close, teachers are left reeling from massive shifts
in policy and practice that have affected
their everyday work over the past decade,
yet many say they're still cautiously optimistic about the direction the profession
is heading.
A broad look at the last 10 years shows
that the policy pendulum has swung

back and forth. Teachers say they feel as
if their jobs have gotten harder, as they
grapple with both constantly changing
education reforms-including those that
affect their pay and job security-and
with societal problems that have made
their way into the classroom.
"There's an increasing amount of responsibility and accountability," said
Freeda Pirillis, a long-time teacher who is
now the coordinator for an International

Baccalaureate program in Chicago. "It's
almost become so burdensome and distracting to doing the job that's important."
For instance, most states toughened the
way they grade their teachers thanks to
federal incentives-and then walked back
at least some of those teacher-evaluation
reforms. The Common Core State Standards were released in 2010, the adoption of which has led to new textbooks
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Dodgeball: Bullying
Tool or Fun Game?
By Arianna Prothero
Is dodgeball a harmless, time-honored game or
school-sanctioned bullying?
Every now and again, charged debate over whether
dodgeball should be played in schools flares up in the
media and provokes polarizing arguments.
The dodgeball debate, however, is more than just
fodder for Twitter spats and opinion pieces. The future
of the game that remains popular with some students
and is a cultural touchstone for many Americans is a
point of major division in parts of the K-12 community.
"I will be honest, our membership is very split,"
said Michelle Carter, the senior program manager
for SHAPE America, the nation's largest membership
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Education Week - December 11, 2019

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