Getting kids to eat more vegetables, easy-peasy

February 16th, 2017

“Eat your vegetables” is a frequent refrain at many a family dinner table. Children are not known for their love of vegetables, and parents often find themselves prompting, cajoling, or bribing their kids to get their vitamins and minerals. But parents aren’t present at every mealtime. Even many young children eat one or more meals a day at school. How can schools get students to consume more fruits and vegetables so that their brains and bodies will get the

Confronting a Threat to Scientific Progress: Skepticism

January 19th, 2017

Scientific progress is at its highest point in history, yet advances in health, environmental protection, and other fields face a major threat: distrust from some members of the public. Although 97% of scientists agree that global temperatures are rising and changing ecosystems, less than 75% of American citizens do. And a shocking number of parents distrust the safety of childhood vaccines, despite the fact that fabricated claims about the risks have been thoroughly

Educational Technology Is Not Making the Grade

Digital technology has revolutionized our homes, cars, and workplaces, but it hasn’t changed much in one surprising area: schools. The problem isn’t that schools lack access to technology, but that the expensive technology they have isn’t effective. In 2014 alone, U.S. schools spent close to $10 billion on educational technology, yet research on the benefits for students is “disheartening, at best,” according to Kimberly Lawless, who reviewed dozens of studies on the topic in Policy

More than Words: The Cornerstone of Reading Comprehension

Learning to read is one of the most fundamental, and yet most complex, tasks for young students. Despite many national initiatives to boost reading instruction, an alarming number of children still struggle: on a test sometimes called “the Nation’s Report Card,” (the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP), almost half of fourth and eighth graders were rated as below proficient in reading in 2015. Part of the reason it’s so challenging to become proficient is that reading