TALAS Summer Leadership Summit will be in El Paso!
Call for Proposals Texas Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents (TALAS)State Summer Leadership Summit Theme: “Elevating Your Voice Through ACTions and LEADership”Dates: Friday, May 16, 2025, and Saturday, May 17, […]
3.2.1: On magic bullets, how to handle criticism, and what to let go of this year
I.
“The source of healthy boundaries is self-love and self-respect. When you learn to love yourself, you are less likely to put up with people who don’t love you back.”
II.
“Caring about everything is a disaster.
Caring about nothing is also a disaster.
Nurture the small pocket of things that truly matter to you.”
The effectiveness of Social Emotional Learning
Does Social-Emotional Learning Really Work? Educators Had a Lot to Say
The emphasis on teaching social-emotional learning continues to expand across K-12 schools, especially at the high school level. That is the case even though there has been significant pushback against such programs, also known as SEL, in several states and many communities across the country.
Eighty-three percent of principals reported in 2024 that their schools use an SEL curriculum or program, up from 73 percent in the 2021-22 school year, and 46 percent in 2017-18, according to a nationally representative survey by RAND and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL.
Social-emotional learning—which aims to teach students soft skills such as empathy, managing emotions, and setting goals—aims to help kids develop the life skills they need to succeed academically and socially and be better prepared for college and the workforce. But critics say its inclusion in the curriculum de-emphasizes academic learning and often promotes a politically liberal agenda that does not align with the beliefs of many parents and educators.
The New Social Security ‘Fairness’ Act Is Neither Fair Nor Just
On Jan. 5, President Joe Biden signed a law that represents a giveaway to retirees who already have generous state-provided pension benefits.
While union leaders are cheering the bill as a win for their members, it’s a bad deal for the rest of us. It will undermine the progressive nature of the Social Security program, cost taxpayers billions and force painful cuts down the road.
The new bill itself is short and simple, less than 300 words. In a clever bit of marketing, the sponsors dubbed it the Social Security Fairness Act. But the bill isn’t about “fairness”; it’s about giving a windfall to a relatively small group of people at the expense of taxpayers.
FAFSA updates
Lower shares of middle-income students in the class of 2023 completed the federal financial aid form than those who graduated before the health crisis.
Federal student aid in the U.S. depends on one form — the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or the FAFSA. But not every student fills it out.
Recently, researchers at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, looked closely at completion rates for the FAFSA and cataloged some surprising trends.
Among them: Completion rates for low-income students have mostly rebounded after dips seen during the pandemic, while completion rates for most other income groups have declined. Middle-income students, in particular, still have lower completion rates than they did pre-pandemic.
Immigration lockdown
Los Angeles school officials have a message for President-elect Donald Trump about his promised immigration crackdown: we’re ready for you.
Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who came to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant from Portugal, said this week the nation’s second largest district is preparing for the incoming administration’s planned mass deportations.
The district has begun mandatory training for staff in how to respond if federal immigration officers appear at or nearby schools, Carvalho said, and has produced ‘know your rights’ cards to be distributed to students, with directions on how to behave if approached by immigration agents.
