Friday’s news roundup:
1. Montana’s superintendent race is still too close to call.
2. What’s next for federal education policy?
3. Philadelphia schools borrow to keep the lights on.
4. Indianapolis elects a raft of school board reformers.
5. Let’s replace school systems with charter schools.
6. Paying for Common Core-related technology will strain school budgets.
7. Idaho teachers should still get bonuses the voters overturned, opines the Idaho Statesman.
8. Does our culture obsess over children?
9. New Hampshire’s board of education can end its moratorium on charter schools, legislators say after sending more money its way.
10. Arizona’s tea party governor looks to spend more on K-12.
Thursday’s news roundup:
1. Teachers say technology makes kids more antsy, expect entertainment, more likely to give up when answers take a longer time.
2. What will happen to Indiana’s school choice reforms with a former union official as superintendent? It could mean the state junks the Common Core.
3. Chastened Idaho Republican leaders tell voters they’re ready to listen on education reform.
4. Teachers talk homosexual foreplay in a Maine middle school.
5. What schools can do when they have freedom.
6. President Obama’s re-election is an indictment of higher education: It never exposes future leaders to serious conservative thought, writes Mark Bauerlein.
7. Nevada voters in the country’s fifth-largest school district rejected a tax increase for school construction and repair.
8. Union power reigns over California’s schools tax initiatives.
9. Ohio voters passed 55 percent of schools tax increases on the November ballot.
10. Will “major changes” come to West Virginia schools?
Wednesday’s news roundup:
1. Union favorite Glenda Rist ousts voucher and Common Core champion Tony Bennett as Indiana superintendent, 52-48. He says this endangers the Common Core and state vouchers.
2. Bennett’s ouster shows the damage U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has done to the Common Core, says Rick Hess.
3. Battles are coming to Tennessee over expanding charter schools and allowing vouchers.
4. Voters shoot down Idaho’s laws requiring online classes and tying teacher evaluations to student achievement.
5. Georgians say “yes” to a constitutional amendment allowing independent charter schools.
6. Eighty percent of Pennsylvanians say they’ve never heard of the Common Core.
7. Teachers say they will cheat on student tests that determine their evaluations.
8. Pennsylvania schools tag kids with tracking devices so researchers can study the flu.
9. School choice is good for democracy.
10. What’s next in education for President Obama?
Tuesday’s news roundup:
1. Today’s ballot initiatives test the clout of teachers unions.
2. Why would California’s teachers union back a ballot proposition that offers them less money than another?
3. Georgia’s charter school initiative goes to the ballot today as its supporters and detractors make their last arguments.
4. Now that New Jersey school board elections happen in November, will voters turn out for them in higher numbers?
5. German and Swedish homeschoolers flee persecution.
6. Are computers making kids too fidgety to learn?
7. As the New York Times declares the “Year of the Massive Online Open Course,” randomized trials show online college classes work well.
8. Montanta college students can store their guns on campus.
9. Chicago school leaders need to level with parents about school closings, the Chicago Tribune opines.
10. Lindsey Burke compares the Common Core to Goals 2000.
Monday’s news roundup:
1. How California’s governor is tilting the truth on K-12 to get voters to increase taxes on themselves and their neighbors who earn more.
2. Are Georgia teacher unions using tax dollars to combat a ballot initiative that would give them some competition?
3. In Ohio, 194 schools want their taxpayers to pay more. Should they?
4. South Dakotas will consider teacher and K-12 tax proposals tomorrow.
5. Nevada teachers raise all the competing thoughts in play over teacher evaluations based on student test scores.
6. Kentucky students take the first tests based on the Common Core, and scores drop by some 30 points.
7. Look at that: Phonics still works.
8. Consider the juncture between online learning and physical activity.
9. Rick Hess thinks it’s unlikely tomorrow’s election means much change in federal education policy.
10. A Utah bike enthusiast explains how priorities compete within state budgets.
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.
