Thursday and Friday: Happy Thanksgiving!
See you Monday.
Wednesday’s roundup:
1. A Common Core supporter doesn’t like the beginnings of national social studies standards.
2. Oklahoma’s Supreme Court rules that school districts can’t sue families who use special-needs vouchers.
3. Indiana’s Supreme Court hears arguments today over the state’s voucher program. The Indianapolis Star says the court should affirm the program.
4. In Los Angeles, researchers find advanced degrees do not improve teachers and that seniority policies mean 45 percent of people the school district let go were top performers.
5. Whenever good things start to happen for students, unions show up to push back, editorializes the Wall Street Journal.
6. Why New Jersey kids should have vouchers.
7. Education reformers take a page from unions and start filing lawsuits.
8. In the past five years, British schools have spent $1 billion on technology, but a new report says the spending hasn’t caused better academic outcomes.
9. Forty-one percent of New York superintendents say their schools won’t be able to balance budgets within four years.
10. Texas looks to control retired teachers’ health costs.
Tuesday’s roundup:
1. A San Antonio magnet school expelled a student for refusing to wear a location-tracking ID badge.
2. The federal government spent billions attempting to turn around schools, and accomplished nothing.
3. A Colorado appeals court hears a lawsuit against the country’s one and only district-run voucher program.
4. Michigan school finance now should be different from the 1970s, opines the Detroit News.
5. Pennsylvania community colleges are cutting adjunct professor’s hours because of ObamaCare.
6. The American Legislative Exchange Council rejects an anti-Common Core resolution.
7. Why accreditation is a cartel.
8. Idaho’s department of education retracts its mandate of two online classes for all high schoolers.
9. Three experienced charter school networks apply to open in DC, projecting to educate thousands of kids per year.
10. Only a third of Arkansas schools rate “exemplary” or “achieving.”
Monday’s roundup:
1. A Michigan bill would revamp the state’s education funding system so that money follows the child, allowing students to choose school districts, take online classes, and earn $2,500 for graduating early.
2. California school board members who opposed parents pulling the Parent Trigger may have lost their seats in the Nov. 6 election.
3. In his first post-election speech, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan promises the federal government will begin stepping into policy disputes between states and districts.
4. $7 billion in new California tax increases fall under an accounting rule that makes it “virtually impossible” to track the money.
5. Education myths: Learning styles and stimuli-rich preschool environments matter.
6. DC students are leaving unionized public schools for largely non-union public charter schools, so the local teachers union wants to forcibly unionize charter school teachers.
7. Why Los Angeles shouldn’t start handing out 700,000 tablet computers.
8. Eliminating affirmative action improves minority college graduation rates, a study finds.
9. A New Hampshire school district wants to use online charter school classes to alleviate overcrowding.
10. Should New York offer tech- and STEM-based high school diplomas?
Is Parent Trigger movie Won’t Back Down too rosy about education’s problems?
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.
