Afternoon Announcements: October 27, 2011

A National Council on Teacher Quality report released Wednesday identifies Maryland as a leader in teacher evaluations, writes the Baltimore Sun.

The common core state standards in English/language arts and mathematics are generally aligned to the leading state, international, and university standards at the high-school-exit level, but a new report says they are more rigorous in some content areas, writes Education Week.

The Chicago Tribune offers four tech tips for parents to embrace digital education.

The MinnPost reports that in a recent visit to Patrick Henry High, Sen Al Franken mixed “math, mirth, and education-bill backing.”

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Something in Common: The Common Core Standards and the Next Chapter in American Education

On October 18, the Alliance hosted a book release party for Alliance Senior Fellow Robert Rothman's new book, Something in Common: The Common Core Standards and the Next Chapter in American Education.

Something in Common is the first book to provide a detailed look at the groundbreaking Common Core State Standards and their potential to transform American education. It tells the story of the unfolding political drama around the making of the Common Core State Standards for math and English language arts, which have been adopted by forty-five states and the District of Columbia, after decades of similar proposals had gone down in flames.

The October 18 event featured a panel discussion with national and state leaders on the opportunities and challenges that will be part of the implementation process of the Common Core State Standards.

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Five Myths About the Common Core State Standards

Writing for the Harvard Education Letter, Alliance Senior Fellow Robert Rothman explores five myths about the Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted by forty-five states and the District of Columbia.

To hear more from Rothman on the common standards, register for the book release party the Alliance is hosting for him on October 18 in Washington, DC. Alternatively, you can order a copy of his new book, Something in Common: The Common Core Standards and the Next Chapter in American Education, at http://www.hepg.org/hep/book/146/SomethingInCommon.

Rothman's five myths about the Common Core State Standards appear below:

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Afternoon Announcements: September 21, 2011

Here are today's announcements!

Detroit Public Schools expects to shed nearly 40 percent of its teachers in the next four years to help close a $327 million deficit, yet projects a loss of just 6,000 students under a state-approved fiscal blueprint, according to the Detroit News. The district would cut more than 1,500 teachers by fall 2015.

Education Week reports that a group of 20 states will lead the development of a new set of common standards in science, according to an announcement today from Achieve, a Washington-based nonprofit managing the effort. Participating states span the country, from California and Arizona to Michigan and Maryland. They will help craft what have been dubbed the Next Generation Science Standards based on a framework developed by a panel of the National Research Council earlier this summer.

According to US News & World Report, a large number of America's highest-performing middle school students regress during high school, according to a new study released Tuesday by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an educational research firm.

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Afternoon Announcements: August 4, 2011

In a recent Education Week blog post, the author asks, “Are 82 percent of schools ‘failing’ under NCLB, as Duncan warned?” According to the post, so far, most states that have released their results are not coming close to this number.

The New York Times reports that the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a blunt acknowledgment that thousands of young black and Latino men are cut off from New York’s civic, educational and economic life, plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to improve their circumstances.

In California and around the United States, the public, private, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors alike are investing resources and forging new partnerships to address America's glaring education crisis in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) (Huffington Post)

Education Week reports that at least twenty-three states have approved cuts to K–12 education for the coming year, reductions that will shrink or eliminate a broad array of school programs and services, particularly those serving the neediest communities.

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Morning Announcements: July 20, 2011

The New York Times writes about a new framework for improving American science education that calls for paring the curriculum in order to focus on core ideas and teaching students more about how to approach and solve problems, rather than just memorizing factual nuggets.

Yesterday, the Common Education Data Standards Initiative released its first draft of the second stage of its core data definitions, which is intended to get state data systems talking the same language, as reported by Education Week.

A new study Chicago study finds that when given the authority, principals make dismissal decisions that put a premium on teacher effectiveness and student achievement, reports Education Next.

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Morning Announcements: July 1, 2011

It's Friday again (already!?) and if we could, we'd send you home early to get a jump on the holiday weekend. If you head home early, have a quick looky-loo at some education news before you go ...

Education Week reports that experts are saying educators need training to understand common standards.

According to a recent U.S. News & World Report blog post, students can forget as much as two months’ worth of math and reading instruction over the summer, according to some reports; but for students who are unable to attend summer learning programs to keep them on track, playing certain video games or practicing skills around the house can help.

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Morning Announcements: June 28, 2011

The New York Times reports 165 Washington teachers were fired last year based on a pioneering evaluation system that places significant emphasis on classroom observations; next month, 200 to 600 of the city’s 4,200 educators are expected to get similar bad news, in the nation’s highest rate of dismissal for poor performance.

In a letter to state superintendents, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan stresses testing integrity, according to the Baltimore Sun.

A recent Education Week blog post begins with, “Teachers from across northwestern Maryland arrived here Monday on buses and in carpools, many of them lugging thick binders containing the ‘common standards’ recently adopted by their state. Their mission: to make sense of those standards, figure out how to apply them in their classrooms, and bring those lessons back to their schools.” Read the complete post.

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Straight A's Covers NCLB, High School Graduation Rates, Common Standards, State Budgets and More

Here's a quick summary of the articles in the June 13 issue of Straight A's, the Alliance's biweekly newsletter.

Click on a title below to access the complete article or download a printer-friendly version of the entire newsletter at: http://www.all4ed.org/files/Volume11No12.pdf.

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Good News On Graduation Rates…With a Caution Flag

It’s early June and that means that the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center has released its latest edition of Diplomas Count—an independent source for high school graduation rate estimates that the Alliance and many other organizations rely on for comparable calculations across states and districts.

The news this year is quite good: the national graduation rate has increased to nearly 72 percent compared to 69 percent last year and 66 percent ten years ago. Even better, the graduation rates for each student subgroup have also improved over last year.

Of course, the good news comes with some bad. The graduation rates of American Indian (54 percent), Hispanic (58 percent), and black (57 percent) students still remain under 60 percent and far below those of their white (78 percent) and Asian (83 percent) peers.

Nevertheless, the results are a shot in the arm for education reform advocates who are struggling to beat the drum for reform policies in a new era of fiscal austerity and often find themselves facing the tough question “why should we invest in education when several decades of reform have not moved the needle?”

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