Friday’s ed news
LOUISIANA: The Obama administration tries to stop parents from defending the state’s voucher program.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Many large cities ban teachers from making money from their education inventions.
INTERNATIONAL: A study finds U.S. students are above average on international tests, but our best students are still below their peers.
PENNSYLVANIA: Parents flee to choice schools to avoid the sinking school district.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Lawmakers are preparing a flurry of Common Core bills to release in the spring.
MICHIGAN: The state senate approves moving forward with Common Core.
UNIONS: The NEA president proposes getting rid of step-and-lane teacher salary schedules.
TEXAS: Waste, fraud, and abuse inside school tutoring programs, thanks to No Child Left Behind.
Thursday’s ed news
LOUISIANA: Voucher enrollment has increased 38 percent over last year.
MICHIGAN: A teacher sues her union just to escape.
VIRGINIA: Republicans release an education reform plan that would make state tests more like Common Core and give teachers career options.
PENNSYLVANIA: Democrats want the state to publish how much new education regulations cost.
NATIONAL: A report finds states still hide special-needs students under the rug.
MINNESOTA: A watchdog group asks the state Supreme Court to draw the line for when school district flyers on tax hikes become tax-sponsored promotional material.
WISCONSIN: Parents, educators bring up their Common Core horror stories in state testimony.
ENGLISH LEARNERS: Common Core paves the way for a universal definition of English language learner.
FLORIDA: A school district finds it’s cheaper to ignore the state’s class size law and pay the resulting fine than hire teachers to comply with the law.
TESTING: See what the feds think of Common Core test creation progress.
Wednesday’s ed news
NCLB: Researchers discover that No Child Left Behind led to a spike in ADHD prescriptions for kids.
FEDERAL GRANTS: Sixteen states and DC pursue preschool Race to the Top funds.
INDIANA: The Democrat state superintendent sues the Republican-majority state school board over when to release school A-F grades.
STUDENT PRIVACY: A U.S. Senator from Maryland questions Education Secretary Arne Duncan over relaxing student privacy law.
DRONES: An Australian company announces plans to deliver textbooks using unmanned drones.
CALIFORNIA: Los Angeles’ iPad debacle just got millions of dollars worse, as estimates for prices and equipment continue to increase.
TEACHERS: NEA members push back against their union’s support for Common Core.
CALIFORNIA: A new law that purports to shield sexually conflicted kids actually hurts them, and everyone else, writes Larry Sand.
COMMON CORE: The time-wasting initiative is sucking the air out of more effective reforms, writes Stanford researcher Eric Hanushek. And a study finds Common Core is not prompting most English teachers to assign tougher reading.
SPENDING: Public school staffing is at its highest level in two years.
Tuesday’s ed news
MISSOURI: A ballot initiative aims to open a tax-credit scholarship program that gives donors a 50 percent tax credit for donations to private K-12 scholarships.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: A school district that wants to do better than Common Core has to petition the federal government for that right.
WISCONSIN: Milwaukee wants to lease its own school building after selling it to a developer rather than sell it outright to a private school.
DROPOUTS: A study finds that 15 percent of young adults are neither in school nor working.
HIGHER EDUCATION: Why “disruptive” education and technology are actually dangerous to education.
NEW JERSEY: Two private schools petition to convert to public charter schools.
ILLINOIS: Gov. Quinn says no more construction money for a charter school under scrutiny for money mismanagement.
SCHOOL RATINGS: A new report examines the trends in rating systems for public schools.
INDIANA: The state board of education asks the legislature to switch which agency runs A-F school grades.
Monday’s ed news
FLORIDA: Free lunch for everyone becomes a new option for schools in the state.
LOUISIANA: Parents seek a student privacy law.
KANSAS: The state board of education asks the state attorney general to defend them against a lawsuit claiming national science standards indoctrinate students.
NEW YORK: The textbook publishing industry faces stiff competition from free or cheaper online materials.
PENNSYLVANIA: The Common Core debate puts schools in limbo.
LOUISIANA: Meet a reviving education system.
DC: Why new teacher evaluations seem to have worked well.
CURRICULUM: Why all children deserve the best.
OKLAHOMA: School A-F grades have come out, but the state keeps changing them due to miscalculations.
HIGHER ED: Why accreditation is rife with conflicts of interest.
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.
