Morning Announcements: September 7, 2011

Today's morning announcements:

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is going on a road trip this week to the “Great Lakes Region” – which includes electorally important states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin – to discuss education reform. According to Education Week, Duncan says he believes K-12 education is a bipartisan issue that he hopes to work on with both sides of the aisle. Duncan’s first top will be today in Pittsburgh, where he’ll talk about the importance of collaboration, and then it’s on to Erie, Pa, where he will discuss the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Fund. View the entire bus tour schedule here.

Negotiations over Chicago extending its school days continues. The Chicago Tribune reports the city’s public schools officials have expanded their offer of financial incentives to schools and teachers in exchange for working longer hours. Three schools have voted to move to a longer day, despite union opposition.

A new poll shows New Yorkers are broadly dissatisfied with the quality of their public schools and do not believe Mayor Michael Bloomberg has helped improved the situation, according to the New York Times.

Washington DC schools have made a significant change to the way they evaluate some teachers. The Washington Post reports that public schools officials have decided to modify the IMPACT teacher evaluation system that involves teachers who received “highly effective” ratings for the past two school years. If they achieve the same ratings on their first two evaluations this fall, they can opt out of the next three evaluations.

With high unemployed looming as  President Obama prepares to give his jobs-plan speech Thursday, Marketplace reports that some see the construction and refurbishing of the nation's schools as a way to create work for people.

The Associated Press reports that Indiana's state school superintendent says just over half of the school vouchers available for the program's first year have been used. Parents have applied for 3,685 of the vouchers that use public school money to help pay for students to attend private schools.

A new Massachusetts study suggests charter schools in urban communities are better at increasing their students’ mathematics and language arts performance on state assessments, while nonurban charter schools are not, according to Education Week.

The Des Moines Register reports that Iowa’s top education leaders unveiled a framework Tuesday for overhauling Iowa’s education system that calls for high school exit exams, doing away with an almost century-old teacher pay system and expanding charter schools.