Friday’s news roundup:
1. Commn Core has released sample test items. Neal McCluckey lays out their faults.
2. Idaho reform opponents have raised nearly nine times the money advocates have for education reforms on the November ballot.
3. Don’t deny Georgians school choice: Approve an amendment allowing independent charter schools, editorializes the Augusta Chronicle.
4. Texas schools punish students who refuse to carry cards that track their location. The Santa Fe New Mexican wonders why more parents aren’t bothered?
5. Why school-choice-centered accountability is better than state-centered accountability through testing.
6. The centerpiece of the Iowa governor’s education proposals has just come out: higher teacher starting pay, a first-year residency for new teachers, and expanded roles for experienced teachers.
7. Chicago’s schools chief departs, and Louisiana’s schools chief reorganizes his department.
8. “For universities to be efficient or produce better outcomes, we have to collect and disseminate data on both the costs of obtaining a degree and the payoffs,” editorializes Bloomberg Businessweek.
9. California schools perform better on state benchmarks than against federal benchmarks. Achievement measured either way is still extremely low.
10. How about free law school online?
Thursday’s news roundup:
1. Parents are more influential than schools in a child’s academic success, concludes a large new study.
2. Georgia pro- and anti-charter school forces are flinging lawsuits at each other as the November ballot containing a constitutional amendment to allow the schools looms.
3. Supreme Court justices question race-based college admissions. Affirmative action sets students up to fail, two authors say.
4. Michigan’s Proposition 2 is about shielding government workers from sacrifices taxpayers made decades ago, opines the Detroit News.
5. Delaying statewide school grades in Oklahoma impedes parents’ right to know, opines The Oklahoman.
6. Tricky budgeting means no money for New Hampshire charter schools though they account for a tiny percentage of the state’s education spending.
7. Core classes push out time for the arts in some Minnesota schools, says a new study. Nebraska just received a grant to develop school arts standards.
8. The Nevada Policy Research Institute makes war on another tax increase in the state’s largest school district.
9. Kansans now have dueling school efficiency boards.
10. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley supports paying state universities for performance, just like Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Wednesday’s news roundup:
1. How teachers unions double-timed parents attempting to employ California’s Parent Trigger law.
2. A teacher livestreams his do-nothing job in a remade New York rubber room.
3. Indianapolis school bureaucrats are scared of what their teachers really think.
4. A Swedish school cook’s food is so good, she’s being told to stop because all kids can’t enjoy it.
5. Florida plans to have nearly a fifth of its kids attending charter or voucher schools in six years.
6. Union salary schedules are a central obstacle to fixing math and science teacher deficits.
7. Why the Supreme Court should reverse itself and stop allowing racial discrimination in university admissions.
8. How to see if a school is good for your child.
9. Doctors are prescribing ADHD drugs to kids who don’t have ADHD because that’s cheaper than fixing their terrible schools.
10. The Chicago teachers union sues to stop a law aimed at ending public pension abuse.
Tuesday’s news roundup:
1. San Antonio pre-K proponents are targeting voters with TV ads.
2. Romney and Obama are wrong: We don’t need more teachers, writes Jay Greene.
3. Fuzzy math proponents are hijacking the Common Core.
4. Charter school proponents sue two Georgia school districts, alleging taxpayer dollars paid to campaign against a state charter schools amendment.
5. A proposed federal bill would give students more and better information about their likely success in school and later life.
6. Pennsylvania’s charter school law is “woefully outdated,” says the Patriot News.
7. Chicago schools can no longer avoid its budget crisis, editorializes the Sun-Times.
8. Extending an Arizona sales tax rate mostly for education echoes national debates about education spending.
9. Kentucky’s Supreme Court rules against a mild form of school choice.
10. As November nears, proponents and opponents of a school voucher constitutional amendment on the Florida ballot make their cases.
Monday’s news roundup:
1. Two charter operators have put forth bids to run California’s only ‘Parent Trigger school.’
2. Homeschooling is growing as fast as charter schools, but we hear less about it.
3. Virginia schools are also struggling with more federal school lunch mandates.
4. The Common Core is inspiring some schools to teach writing more seriously, leading to better student learning.
5. Parents are concerned a Maryland district’s palm-scan software for school lunch invades their children’s privacy.
6. Chicago attempts to piece together money to pay for the more expensive post-strike teacher contract.
7. Wisconsin and Oklahoma will see new school grading systems this year.
8. New Jersey is testing kindergarteners, but not on paper.
9.Texas has an education infrastructure problem, says the Texas Tribune.
10. Utah’s school board has backed off a plan to let principals share teacher performance data with parents.
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.
