Friday’s ed news:
1. How the federal government is taking over education.
2. A Tennessee lawmaker introduces Parent Trigger legislation.
3. A South Carolina lawmaker re-introduces voucher and education tax credit legislation.
4. The Spokane school district is adoptng fuzzy math curriculum because of the Common Core.
5. A law school professor insists on equal education, which means eliminating all private and home schools.
6. Testing will be a major Common Core obstacle.
7. One set of top-performing charter schools explicitly teaches American history, culture, and values.
8. View a comprehensive guide to U.S. school choice programs.
9. Kansas’s House approves a bill that would forbid teachers unions from using paycheck donations for politics.
10. Ahead of a re-election campaign, Florida’s governor proposes $2,500 raises for every teacher.
Thursday’s ed news:
1. School choice could save Texas billions.
2. Missouri’s governor wants charter schools in the state, and the legislature just voted to give it to him.
3. Colleges are overproducing elementary teachers, an Education Week analysis finds.
4. A frustrated Wisconsin teacher quits the public school “sausage factory” to start his own school kids can attend because of vouchers.
5. The Common Core means a literature teacher of the year whose students consistently score high is now on professional probation.
6. Teacher pensions are crushing education spending, says Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett.
7. The majority of Utahns believe teachers should allow to carry guns in school.
8. The Texas House zeroes out funding for standardized tests.
9. View a map of prospective Chicago school closings.
10. Will testing kill the Common Core?
Wednesday’s ed news:
1. How to get better teachers.
2. A Massachusetts school board wants the state to replace the Common Core with its previous, better standards.
3. Employees in Ohio’s largest school district have been found changing grades some 5,300 times.
4. Can you teach kids to persevere?
5. Virginia’s largest teachers union supports Gov. McDonnell’s proposed teacher reforms, but affiliate unions object.
6. What are Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s plans for education? Voucher supporters gear up.
7. Pennsylvania lawmakers want right-to-work, which ends forced unionization.
8. Kansas’s governor wants more money for early literacy.
9. An Oregon lawmaker wants to keep public pension records secret.
10. Arizonans join the Common Core debate.
Tuesday’s ed news:
1. The national graduation rate is 79 percent in four years, the highest since 1976.
2. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer proposes funding K-12 schools not by attendance, but by performance.
3. A Florida mom pays for a security guard at her child’s public school.
4. Michigan is one of the top states for charter school performance.
5. More kids are being diagnosed with ADHD.
6. Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad tells the legislature to pass his changes to teacher prep and pay first, then he’ll talk more money for schools.
7. Congress is not likely to get much of anything done at all, and that includes move on a series of education laws set to expire.
8. Christo Rey Catholic schools fund themselves through students’ jobs.
9. Boston considers ending student busing to create court-mandated percentages of races at schools in favor of letting kids attend school nearer home.
10. Virginia’s teachers union supports a proposal to lengthen the time to tenure and shorten contract disputes.
Monday’s ed news:
1. Wisconsin’s Republican Senate leader will block a voucher expansion unless voters approve the measure directly.
2. Federal rulemakers have relaxed school lunch limits.
3. Federal preschool program Head Start is an utter waste and should be replaced by vouchers, writes the Brookings Institution’s Russ Whitehurst. President Obama plans to propose universal preschool despite Head Start’s failings.
4. President Obama’s safety proposals could undermine instruction.
5. A federal appeals court upholds Wisconsin’s Act 10 ‘in its entirety.’
6. Idaho reconsiders the Common Core.
7. The healthcare law means adjunct profs, who comprise 70 percent of college faculty, are getting their hours and pay cut.
8. Mississippi’s Senate passes a bill to allow charter schools in the state.
9. Researchers counter Diane Ravitch’s claims Milwaukee vouchers haven’t helped students.
10. The new Common Core tests will measure synthesis and investigation.
For last week’s School Reform News roundup, click here.
For other top-notch school reform news selections, visit:
Image by Mo Riza.
Joy Pullmann is a research fellow on education policy for The Heartland Institute and managing editor of The Federalist, a web magazine on politics, policy, and culture.
