What We’re Reading This Week: May 26

The Power of Digital-Comic Therapy in Schools

The Atlantic

“In this school [and others], more and more educators are relying on popular online comic creators such as Make Beliefs Comix and other digital teaching tools to address disruptive behaviors and serious academic challenges.”

Measuring the impact of lead exposure on learning and cognition: Water crises are springing up in districts nationwide

Education Dive

“With unnerving frequency, school districts and communities are discovering elevated lead levels after undertaking tests of drinking water sources in their facilities.”

More Than One in Three Black Students in the South Attend an Intensely Segregated School

Mother Jones

“In 2014, more than one in three black students attended a school in the South that was intensely racially segregated, meaning a school where 90 percent of students were racial minorities—a 56 percent rise from 1980.”

Why It's So Hard To Know Whether School Choice Is Working

National Public Radio

“Experts say one single, overarching issue bedevils their efforts to study the impact of school choice programs. That is: It's hard to disentangle the performance of a school from the selection of its students.”

Race/Related

The New York Times

“Many students, especially low-income black and Hispanic children, are prevented from receiving the equal education that [Horace] Mann dreamed of. Some public high school students in New York are sharing their perspectives through open letters, spoken word and poetry.”

It Was Hard This Year to Keep Politics Out of High School Yearbooks

The New York Times

“A yearbook isn’t supposed to be divisive. So how to commemorate a school year that coincided with a meltdown in decorum in American politics?”

Is mindfulness meditation good for kids? Here's what the science actually says. 

Vox

“The relatively few studies we have on mindfulness in schools suggest a generally positive effect on decreasing anxiety and increasing cognitive performance. But the hype around mindfulness also seems to be outpacing the science.”

What ‘school choice’ means in the era of Trump and DeVos

The Washington Post

“If President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have made one thing clear when it comes to education policy, it is this: Their priority is expanding ‘school choice.’ What is that, exactly?”

Black parents use Civil War-era law to challenge Mississippi’s ‘inequitable’ schools

The Washington Post

“‘Today, Mississippi schools are anything but uniform. ... If you’re a kid in Mississippi, your chances of getting a good education depend largely on whether your school is mostly white or mostly black. That is not a uniform system.’”