Morning Announcements: September 22, 2011

President Obama is poised to broaden federal influence in local schools by scrapping key elements of No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration’s signature education law, and substituting his own brand of school reform, according to the Washington Post. While unpopular with Republicans in Congress and some in the educational establishment, the move is drawing applause from governors around the country struggling to meet the demands of the nine-year-old law.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced it will fund more charter school-district collaborations, benefiting schools in Boston, Central Falls, R.I., and Sacramento, Calif, among others.The districts still have to formally apply for the Gates funding, but they can win up to $100,000 once they do, according to Education Week.

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Afternoon Announcements: July 25, 2011

A decade into his record-breaking education philanthropy, Bill Gates talks to the Wall Street Journal about teachers, charters—and regrets: “It’s hard to improve public education—that’s clear. … It’s been about a decade of learning.” Since 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has poured some $5 billion into education grants and scholarships.

Of more than 100,000 public schools in the United States, about 300 recently have faced suspicions, allegations and, in some cases hard proof, that teachers and administrators cheated to inflate standardized test scores. The Washington Post reports on questions raised in these incidents that have sent tremors through the movement to hold schools and teachers accountable for student achievement through annual testing.

According to an article in Education Week, South Korea plans to replace paper textbooks with digital content.

 

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Morning Announcements: June 14, 2011

The Chicago Tribune writes about Simpson Academy for Young Women in Chicago and their decision to allow its pregnant students to stay until graduation and take advantage of the constant motivation and camaraderie from peers and staff. Sana Bell, a recent graduate of Simpson Academy explains why graduating was important to her:  "I don't want to be on welfare my whole life. I want to have a salary and my own health insurance. I want to own a car and I want to have my own everything. Graduating from high school and going to college is going to help me give my son a better life.”

In Idaho today, state schools chief Tom Luna kicked off the  first meeting of a new task force that will help determine how to implement new school technology investments, the Spokesman-Review reports. Governors Jeb Bush and Bob Wise were in attendance to discuss the value of digital learning.

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Report Round-Up: Friday, October 15, 2010

Finishing the First Lap: The Cost of First Year Student Attrition in America’s Four Year Colleges and Universities from the American Institutes for Research. Nationally, only about 60 percent of students graduate from four-year colleges and universities within six years. This analysis AIR vice president Mark Schneider finds that more than $9 billion was spent by state and federal governments to support students at four-year colleges and universities who left school before their sophomore year during a five-year period. 

White Paper: Next Generation Learning from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This white paper outlines how technology can help students and educators dramatically improve student outcomes, both in high schools and in postsecondary education.

Cutting to the Bone: How the Economic Crisis Affects Schools from the Center for Public Education.  According to this report, although the recession technically ended last year, budgets for LEAs nationwide will likely not reach pre-recession levels until late in the decade.

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Morning Announcements: October 12, 2010

On Sunday, 16 school district chiefs, including New York’s Joel Klein and Washington’s Michelle Rhee published a manifesto entitled how to fix our schools in the Washington Post.

The Associated Press reports on a new analysis that finds states appropriated almost $6.2 billion for four-year colleges and universities between 2003 and 2008 to help pay for the education of students who didn't return for year two.

In an op-ed in the Charlotte Observer, Erskine Bowles, outgoing president of the University of North Carolina system, writes, “Ineffective teaching hurts our students - and ultimately, it hurts all of us” and points to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools as an example of best practices.

On Monday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the creation of a program that will provide grants to organizations to expand the reach of their education technology initiatives. Education Week blogger Ian Quillen reports that the Next Generation Learning Challenges program is releasing its first in a series of requests to solicit funding proposals for technology initiatives, with the first round focused specifically on postsecondary education.

 

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Morning Announcements: September 9, 2010

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to invest up to $250 million over the next eight years to develop "next-generation instructional tools" that will help states and districts implement the common core state standards, the foundation said in its annual report.

Some charter schools are struggling to tap into the federal money provided by the Education Jobs Fund bill because their teachers are employees of a charter management organization or an educational management organization, not a school district according to Education Week.

According to the Sacramento Bee, California charter schools are growing in popularity.

When every teacher is rated 'great,' students suffer, according to the USA Today editorial board. Click here to read the opposing view by A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

In today's Wall Street Journal, columnist William McGurn writes, "When it comes to shaking up the status quo, however, the most potent education reform may be the one that's too often considered a side issue: pension reform."

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