Thursday’s ed news
INDIANA: The state’s second draft of new education standards still looks like Common Core.
CALIFORNIA: Time to start education at birth for kids who have bad parents, bureaucrats decide.
UNIONS: Membership in the nation’s largest teachers union continues to decline.
TESTING: Hidden technical problems with Common Core tests may make their results untrustworthy.
MASSACHUSETTS: A bill to lift the state’s charter schools cap stalls.
PENNSYLVANIA: The Philadelphia school district suspends “last in, first out” rules for hiring and firing teachers.
ILLINOIS: A new bill would delay Common Core.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: A bill to repeal Common Core fails a House vote.
HIGHER ED: Forget student loans. A better way to finance college is promising investors a share of a graduate’s salary.
Wednesday’s ed news
CHOICE: The education market is deeply tied to the real estate market, overextending families and especially hurting the poor and middle class.
FLORIDA: Computers will grade student essays for the new state test. It will also use test items from Utah for its new Common Core-based exams.
CALIFORNIA: Union-demanded seniority rules are pushing young teachers to flee the state.
MARYLAND: A state audit finds the country’s 19th-largest school district has made millions in overpayments and isn’t protecting millions in assets.
NEVADA: Teachers unions push for an extra tax on larger businesses to shovel more money into their pockets.
WISCONSIN: Local GOP leaders make a “no confidence” vote in two Republican lawmakers who have repeatedly blocked attempts to repeal Common Core.
ONLINE ED: A major provider of massive open online college classes has hired a former president of Yale University.
Tuesday’s ed news
INDIANA: Gov. Mike Pence signs a bill making the state the first to jettison Common Core, although the current replacement draft looks very similar.
SCIENCE: Why school vouchers do not threaten the teaching of evolution. And why pulling vouchers because some private schools teach creationism will reduce science achievement overall.
BIG DATA: As software collects countless more information about how kids’ minds work, privacy concerns grow.
TEXAS: School districts compete to get the best teachers.
COMMON CORE: A documentary about Common Core will be live online this coming Monday. An estimated 400 bills on Common Core will be considered in state legislatures this year. And four million kids are guinea pigs for Common Core’s field tests, starting this week.
MICHIGAN: A reporter finds a clause in a teachers union contract granting special preferences to basically every job applicant except men, white people, and Christians.
CALIFORNIA: Closing arguments in a court case charging teachers union rules hurt poor kids will be Thursday.
Monday’s ed news
ARIZONA: The state Supreme Court allows “vouchers 2.0,” paving the way for more expansions of the innovative school choice program that gives parents control over an account holding their child’s education money.
FLORIDA: A proposed expansion to Florida’s popular K-12 tax-credit scholarships has failed, but that may not be so bad since the bill included regulations that would have hurt school choice.
WISCONSIN: Lawmakers can’t agree on what mandates to place on choice schools, so decide to delay consideration.
VIRGINIA: Parents have been desperate to get their kids into this one Arlington school for 30 years. So why hasn’t the district expanded it?
STEM: The science and math worker shortage doesn’t exist.
TESTING: Why high-stakes, annual exams are headed for the dustbin.
HIGHER ED: Student loans are now those most likely to be in default and the fastest-growing consumer debt.
FLORIDA: Military-style charter schools are increasing in number.
NATIONAL: Forty-six states committed themselves to Common Core a year before it existed.
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.
