Morning Announcements: May 23, 2011

Two stories from the Associated Press over the weekend on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The first story focuses on President Obama’s weekly radio and Internet address where he called for Congress to send him a rewrite of No Child Left Behind. In the second story, AP reports, “The long-awaited overhaul of the 9-year-old No Child Left Behind law has begun in the House with the first in a series of targeted bills, but a bipartisan, comprehensive reform of the nation's most important education law still appears far from the finish line.”

Education Week Sean Cavanagh writes about the education reform laws that were passed in many states including the creation or expansion of voucher programs, academic standards, teacher certification, and charter school expansion—in some cases with the backing of both major political parties.

Morning Announcements: January 7, 2011

In Kentucky, a plan to pay cash bonuses of up to $7,500 a year to public school teachers in advanced science and mathematics cleared a Senate panel, despite protests from some lawmakers and members of the state teacher union.

Bloomberg News reports that civil rights advocates oppose new federal legislation that allows states to classify teaching interns as “highly qualified’’ teachers and regularly assign them to schools with mostly poor, minority students.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has released a guide to try to build a bridge between its own math standards, which are widely used in schools across the country, and the math in the common standards, according to Education Week.

The Washington Post editorial board provides evidence of the success or reforms initiated by former DC public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Morning Announcements: December 17, 2010

Education Week discusses Michelle Rhee’s newly launched advocacy group Student First. According to Rhee, the group has signed up more than 100,000 members and collected more than $700,000 through its website alone.

Sexual offenders are finding jobs in American schools, sometimes carrying with them glowing letters of recommendation from officials who knew of inappropriate behavior, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked the state attorney general to investigate alleged intimidation of parents trying to use a new state law to shut down their children’s low-performing elementary school and reopen it as a charter campus.

Morning Announcements: December 6, 2010

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel focuses on how to best educate future educators and profiles a student at Alverno College, a small women's college on Milwaukee's south side that has been widely cited as a national model for training teachers.

The Associated Press writes about the states that lost the Race to the Top competition and how they are left wondering what to do with ambitious reform plans they planned to fund with the money.

Today Michelle Rhee announced she is starting Students First, an advocacy group that will draw on the grassroots power of teachers, parents, and pupils. Rhee also published an op-ed in Newsweek explaining what she learned during her tenure as chancellor of DC public schools. On a related note, the Wall Street Journal published a piece by Joel Klein explaining what he learned as chancellor of New York public schools.

Morning Announcements: December 3, 2010

During a luncheon he hosted on Thursday for newly elected governors, President Obama promised to work closely with them to fix the economy and improve education over the next two years, according to The Caucus, the politics and government blog of the New York Times.

The previous chancellor of DC public schools Michelle Rhee was named to Florida Gov.-elect Rick Scott's education transition team Thursday, fueling rumors that she may become Florida's next education commissioner, The Miami Herald reports.

The Gasden Times (AL) reports on a program that a local high schools is implementing with the goal of keeping more students in high school and preparing them for life afterwards.

In Louisiana, an education advisory panel recommended that the state should assign letter grades to public schools including bonus grades for schools that show solid gains, according to The Advocate.

Morning Announcements: December 1, 2010

Govs. Bush and Wise announce the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning, a roadmap, a roadmap of reform for local, state and federal officials to advance digital learning. The announcements was covered in Education Week, CNN, and the National Journal. 

Morning Announcements: November 30, 2010

The New York Times and TIME magazine write about a new report from America’s Promise Alliance that finds that US high school graduation rate is on the rise. According to the analysis, the U.S. graduation rate increased from 72 percent in 2002 to 75 percent in 2008 and that the number of “dropout factory” high schools fell by 13 percent – from 2,007 in 2002 to 1,746 in 2008.

Yesterday, Cathleen Black, a publishing executive, was approved as Chancellor of New York City public schools with a waiver from the state education commissioner that said her inexperience in education would be offset in part by the appointment of a chief academic officer to serve by her side, according to the New York Times. The editorial board weighs in on the appointment of Ms. Black’s chief academic officer - Shael Polakow-Suransky, a respected, hard-driving educator who has worked his way from middle school math teacher, to high school principal, to his most recent post as the school system’s accountability officer. On a related note, the Christian Science Monitor asks “Have business-savvy officials improved big-city schools?”

The New York Times editorial board also writes about how the Dream Act, the immigration bill that opens a path to legalization for undocumented young people who go to college or serve in the military, has a shot at passing the lame-duck Congress.

Morning Announcements: November 1, 2010

On Saturday the Wall Street Journal ran a piece by Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty entitled The Education Manifesto. In the essay, they wrote , “Four years ago, we both found a cause that inspired us to work hard every day. Reformers nationwide need to take up that mantle. Now is not the time to go soft on tough decisions. Fixing our schools will require courage and persistence, but young lives are at stake. What could be more worth the risks?”

The Boston Herald reports that the number of Massachusetts children attending charter schools has more than doubled in the past decade, reflecting national trends.

A story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution examines the costs of remedial education at Georgia’s colleges. 

One month after school districts in New Jersey received their share of $268 million to bring laid off teachers back to the classroom from the Education Jobs Fund, most districts have not hired anyone and are socking the money away for next year, according to The Star-Ledger.

Morning Announcements: October 20, 2010

College graduation rates among young Americans, especially Latinos, are stagnating, according to the Wall Street Journal and a new report from the American Council on Education. Click here to view an interactive graph on the college attendance rates from the WSJ. The Washington Post also picked up on the study but focused on the finding that younger men are significantly less likely to have completed college than older men.

A new report from the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education finds that about 60 percent of students who graduated from public and private schools in 2005 and 2006 who enrolled at the Community College of Rhode Island needed remediation in one or more areas: reading, writing or math. To read more about the remediation problem on a national level, see the Alliance brief entitled Paying Double: Inadequate High Schools and Community College Remediation. While this RI study finds that high schools aren’t preparing students for community colleges, across the country, a report from the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento finds that community colleges aren’t preparing students for the workforce. Specifically, the study finds that seventy percent of students seeking degrees at California's community colleges did not manage to attain them or transfer to four-year universities within six years.

Morning Announcements: October 18, 2010

Last Thursday, Baltimore teachers rejected a contract that would have provided six-figure salaries for an elite corps but would have tied the pay of all educators to how they perform in the classroom. Of the rejected proposal, the Washington Post editorial board writes, “it's farfetched to hold the proposal out as a groundbreaking model for the nation… The real model for national reform is the Washington, D.C., teachers contract negotiated by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. It took her three years and scads of money, but she got union leaders to agree to rules that prevent the last hired from being the first fired, empower principals and reward teachers most capable of lifting student achievement.”

Middle and high school classes will get tougher as part of an effort Houston ISD officials announced Friday to help persuade thousands of families to keep their children in the state's largest district, according to the Houston Chronicle.