Thursday’s ed news
INDIANA: A Senate panel passes a bill to replace Common Core.
NEW YORK: The state department of education is almost done creating a data system that will follow children “throughout their lives.”
COLORADO: Lawmakers kill an education tax-credit bill.
MARYLAND: The state repeals its no-tolerance school discipline policy.
RURAL CHOICE: How rural communities can benefit from charter schools.
NEW JERSEY: Why supposedly good results from the state’s preschool system don’t hold water.
WYOMING: The embattled state superintendent wins her state Supreme Court case.
TEXTBOOKS: The end of $300 textbooks and the textbook cartel is ending, says Mark Perry.
Wednesday’s ed news
OKLAHOMA: Voters support school choice for all and are willing to consider turning government preschool into vouchers.
INDIANA: The number of students enrolled in statewide vouchers has doubled to nearly 20,000.
ALASKA: More Republicans sign onto a bid to make school vouchers possible by amending the state constitution,
MISSOURI: An unaccredited St. Louis-area school district facing possible bankruptcy could pay as much as $130,000 to lobby for a bailout.
FEDS: Why federal vouchers aren’t a good idea.
OKLAHOMA: Seven bills to repeal or limit Common Core have been filed.
IDAHO: Schools chief Tom Luna won’t seek re-election.
UTAH: A state lawmaker wants more money for online preschool.
TESTS: How people misuse test results.
WISCONSIN: A new bill would make all voucher kids take the state test and force low-performing schools to close or convert to charters.
Tuesday’s ed news
WISCONSIN: Gov. Walker says he supports changing Common Core, but his proposal would hardly change the standards.
WISCONSIN: Today, lawmakers will revive a bill that would give vouchers to special-needs students.
ALASKA: Gov. Sean Parnell wants to bring more public and private school choice to the state.
GEORGIA: Why the state needs school vouchers atop its existing charter and tax-credit scholarship laws.
IOWA: The state debates whether to adopt national science standards.
FEDS: The Obama administration will plow another $39 million into a failed school turnaround program. And districts in five states have rejected federal Race to the Top funds, citing high costs of compliance and privacy concerns.
READING: Fourth graders nationwide improve their reading skills, but most still do not read well.
STATISM: Why leftists push for “global citizenship” in schools.
HIGHER ED: Top liberal arts colleges cost a lot but don’t provide a very good education, a report finds.
Monday’s ed news
NATIONAL CHOICE: Tomorrow, two U.S. Senators will unveil school choice legislation as an answer to President Obama’s call for an end to income inequality.
TENNESSEE: Lawmakers try to compromise with the governor by offering a voucher bill that would offer choice to students attending the state’s worst 10 percent of schools.
NEW YORK: The nation’s largest teachers union local is at odds with its parent union over Common Core, and says other unions nationwide are having similar doubts.
COLORADO: A coalition of mothers has convinced a state senator to introduce a bill delaying Common Core and its national tests.
WISCONSIN: Parents protest the forced return of a porn-watching teacher to their kids’ middle school.
CALIFORNIA: Los Angeles libraries will offer an online high school to dropouts.
CONNECTICUT: A high-achieving charter network will radically rethink itself after deciding it spends too much time preparing students for “low-level tests.”
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: What if we ran education more like Medicare and gave people far more choices?
For last week’s School Reform News roundup, click here.
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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.
