Leigh Jones

Leigh lives in Houston with her husband and daughter. She is the news editor for The World and Everything in It and reports on education for WORLD Digital.

Big change in the Big Easy

Education | Survey of New Orleans charter school graduates shows big gains in educational achievement

by Leigh Jones
Posted 8/15/18, 05:13 pm

New Orleans became the biggest charter school experiment in the country in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina washed out the city’s traditional public school system. Rather than rebuild a district already plagued with underperforming schools, state lawmakers turned over almost every campus to non-profit charter school groups. Governed by local boards, each school had the autonomy to adopt a unique curriculum, emphasis, and education strategy. Parents had the freedom to choose the school that best fit their children’s needs.

Training Americans to work

Education | Trump touts a technical education funding bill amid push for apprenticeships and vocational courses

by Leigh Jones
Posted 8/08/18, 03:01 pm

David Thompson ran track in high school, and that athletic talent might have paved a path to college. But an injury his senior year created what he described as “a new opportunity.” Four years after his graduation in 2014, Thompson returned last week to his alma mater, Tampa Bay Tech in Tampa Fla., to describe what happened after that injury forced him to “fall back” on vocational training.

Capitalizing on classical education

Education | Growth in the classical model has created the need for a new set of educational support structures—including standardized tests

by Leigh Jones
Posted 8/01/18, 05:50 pm

The Association of Classical Christian Schools has seen a 20 percent increase over four years in the number of campuses using a classical curriculum. During the last 10 years, the number of students attending ACCS member schools has grown 30 percent. Homeschoolers have also flocked to the classical movement, as have university-model Christian schools. And big charter networks, like Arizona-based Great Hearts, are even bringing classical education to the secular public school environment.

Parents’ choice

Education | New survey shows moms and dads want more from school than the three R’s

Leigh Jones | 7/25/18, 04:35 pm

What do parents want from their children’s schools? Top-tier academics? Championship sports teams? Award-winning arts programs?

Those seem likely to top the list, based on typical funding allocations and the emphasis lawmakers place on school assessments. But according to a new survey, that’s not what parents find most important.

Israel evacuates White Helmets from Syria

Leigh Jones | 7/23/18, 11:59 am

Israeli forces on Sunday evacuated 422 members of the Syrian Civil Defense force—also known as the White Helmets—who had been working in a volatile border region between the two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he authorized the humanitarian mission at the request of U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The White Helmets have worked for years to help victims of Syria’s long-running civil war.

Court blocks initiative to split California three ways

Leigh Jones & Lynde Langdon | 7/19/18, 11:24 am

The California Supreme Court shot down a ballot initiative asking voters if the state should be divided into three parts. The justices on Wednesday ordered the secretary of state to leave the three-state plan off the ballot, saying significant questions have been raised about its validity. “We conclude that the potential harm in permitting the measure to remain on the ballot outweighs the potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election,” the justices wrote in a unanimous ruling.

A dangerous fig leaf

Education | ‘Restorative justice’ approaches to school discipline reduces punishments but enables behavior problems

Leigh Jones | 7/18/18, 03:35 pm

The commission investigating the Feb. 14 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., won’t release its final report until the beginning of 2019. But last week it came to an important, early conclusion: The Broward County school system’s restorative justice program played no role in enabling Nikolas Cruz’s murderous rampage.

DEW is DOA

Education | The merging of the Education and Labor departments hits a predictable congressional roadblock

Leigh Jones | 7/11/18, 02:07 pm

A Trump administration plan to merge the Education and Labor departments is just one part of a larger governmental overhaul proposal. But it’s getting almost all the attention, in part because the two agencies are among the federal government’s largest.

Giving teachers a right to choose

Education | Education reform advocates cheer the Supreme Court’s ruling on unions

Leigh Jones | 7/04/18, 10:02 am

School choice advocates are celebrating the final ruling issued by the U.S. Supreme Court this term, a decision that prevents public sector unions from collecting fees from nonmembers. What do unions have to do with school choice?

Shrinking history

Education | Teachers and historians are divided over a plan to begin the AP world history course at 1450

Leigh Jones | 6/27/18, 03:52 pm

Imagine a world without the Roman Empire, the Vikings, the Great Wall of China, or the spread of the early church and its influence on civilization. Nothing of significance happened in the world before 1450, right?

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