Morning Announcements: April 28, 2011

According to Education Week, state GOP leaders are pushing to expand vouchers. Ed Week also reports on how students are making math connections using smart phones. 

The Connecticut Post interviews students and school officials that think a bill to raise the drop out age may not help.

Students in about a dozen South Carolina high schools are learning personal finances through an online course funded by the state's bankers, and Gov. Nikki Haley said Wednesday she wants all high schools to participate, the Associated Press reports.

The New York Times provides more details on the announcement yesterday that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Pearson will partner to create online reading and math courses aligned with the common core state standards.

Morning Announcements: March 14, 2011

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, former chancellor of NYC public schools Joel Klein writes, “Any reform worth its name must start by recognizing that teachers are our most important educational asset. That's why we need to treat teaching as a profession, by supporting excellence, striving for constant improvement and ridding the system of poor performers.”
 
Budget Cuts Raise Questions About Federal Commitment to Literacy, Education Week writes. On the Curriculum Matters blog, Catherine Gewertz writes about the ‘career’ part of college readiness.

A guest columnist in the Magic City Morning Star explains how high school dropouts are effecting Maine’s economy.

Morning Announcements: December 15, 2010

The Washington area's affluence and education levels make it the wealthiest and most educated region in the nation, according to the Washington Post.

USA Today reports on a national trend of school districts making it tougher for students to waive their physical education classes by scaling back all but a handful of exemptions. The opinion pages of USA Today focus on the latest PISA results and how to best improve public education.

More Arkansans’ names graced high school diplomas and bachelor’s degrees in the latter half of the decade than 10 years ago, according to new census numbers released on Tuesday.

Morning Announcements: November 17, 2010

Groups such as the American Association of School Administrators and the National School Boards Association are eyeing regulatory relief under No Child Left Behind, Education Week reports.

The Grand Rapids editorial Board calls for teacher unions to work with the Michigan Legislature to reform teacher tenure laws.

The Detroit News editorial board argues that Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s plan have the state make $400 million in tobacco settlement payments available to Detroit and the other troubled school districts is not the answer.

In New Hampshire, a special legislative committee voted on Monday to divide between schools and the state $41 million in emergency federal funding intended to protect teachers' jobs, according to the Associated Press.

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. 

Morning Announcements: September 23, 2010

The New Times in Connecticut takes a look at the Latino Scholarship Fund which provides role models of successful Latinos and financial and emotional support to those who want to pursue an education beyond high school.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, school funds don't match teacher layoffs and districts that didn't take hits are looking for ways to spend federal job money.

California’s $34 million student database system is a year behind schedule, the Sacramento Bee reports. “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to pull the plug if the new system can't reliably relay data by the end of the year. The failed California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System is cited as a key reason why the state has twice failed to qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Race to the Top funds.”

The Black Voice News writes about the high school dropout crises and opens up their story with a 15-year old named Tevon who thinks “School ain’t for me. I’ve been failing since I was in the sixth grade.”

Morning Announcements: September 22, 2010

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to approve an overhaul of the $2.25 billion E-Rate program to give schools more options for faster Internet service, allow for community Internet service and to begin pilot programs for digital textbooks, according to the New York Times.  The program will mostly serve schools in poor and rural areas.

In the Curriculum Matters blog, Education Week reporter Erik Robelen discusses a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education that calls for the federal government to substantially step up its role in promoting strong literacy skills at the middle and high school levels.

Teacher performance pay alone does not raise student test scores, according to a new study released today by the Vanderbilt University's Peabody College.

Democrats' dreams of passing an immigration bill before the midterm elections died Tuesday, when Senate Republicans blocked a measure that could have carried legislation benefiting undocumented college student, reports the Chronicle for Higher Education.

Inside Higher Ed reports that the Hope Scholarship, a merit based program in Georgia, will most likely come to a close by the end by fiscal year 2013 due to an increase in the number of participating students and a decrease in the lottery funds that support the program.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his wife, Alma write about the  “'100 Best' places fighting dropout crisis” in an opinion piece on CNN.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Deborah Kenny, founder and CEO of Harlem Village Academies, asks “What happens to bright teachers stuck in schools that don't have the right to hire by performance and build a culture of excellence?”

Morning Announcements: September 17, 2010

Writing for his "Class Struggle" blog on washingtonpost.com, Jay Mathews discusses President Obama's announcement that "100 corporate chief executives will collaborate with him to improve math and science education." His take? The group "has the potential to enliven school for disadvantaged students and change many of their lives," but "will not do much for long campaign to get young Americans in general more interested science, math, technology and engineering as careers."

The Washington Post reports on a new analysis published in the journal Lancet, which finds that "half the reduction in child mortality over the past 40 years can be attributed to the better education of women." It finds a 9.5 percent decrease in child deaths for every one-year increase in the average education of reproductive-age women.

When Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and mayor-apparent Vincent C. Gray do finally sit down, it is "increasingly likely that the discussion will focus on the terms of her disengagement from the D.C. school system rather than how she might stay," reports the Washington Post. After a screening of "Waiting for Superman," Rhee "portrayed Gray's Democratic primary victory over Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on Tuesday as a catastrophe." Rhee: "[Tuesday's] election results were devastating, devastating," Rhee said. "Not for me, because I'll be fine, and not even for Fenty, because he'll be fine, but devastating for the schoolchildren of Washington, D.C."

The California State Board of Education "took up the controversial issue of teacher evaluations Wednesday, unanimously voting to create an online database to share information about local, state and national efforts to measure educators' effectiveness," according to the Los Angeles Times. "The board also asked the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Fresno school districts to propose specific ways the state can support local efforts to create more meaningful evaluation tools, including the value-added method of using students' test scores to rate teacher performance."

"Just more than half of Texas' college students will graduate in six years," according to Texas Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes. He said one major reason students drop out of college is because they weren't ready in the first place. "Too many high school graduates need remedial college courses, and 80 percent of U.S. students who needed remedial courses in college had a B average in high school," he said.

Morning Announcements: September 15, 2010

Education Week reporter Alyson Klein interviews Rep. John Kline on ESEA, Race to the Top, and common standards.

Several key reforms in Race to the Top winning states hinge on the effectiveness of data systems, but the judges and outside experts worry states could face some heavy lifting to ensure their data systems keep up with their policy plans, Education Week reports.

According to the Washington Post, two D.C. Council members said Tuesday that they will press mayoral primary winner Vincent C. Gray and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to negotiate an "extended transition" that could keep her in the job until the end of the 2011-12 school year.

The editorial staff at the Star Advertiser (HI) thinks the state board’s selection of Kathryn Matayoshi as permanent superintendent to head the embattled Department of Education is a cause for hope.

The number of public school districts and schools not making adequate yearly progress in Kansas under No Child Left Behind increased significantly this year, according to The Lawrence World Journal.

The Boston Globe reports that MCAS test scores released yesterday show that more Massachusetts schools than ever are failing to measure up to federal achievement standards, with 57 percent out of compliance.

And in Pennsylvania, more than eight in 10 schools met the required academic goals for the federal No Child Left Behind law in 2010, according to The Patriot-News.

Patrick Welsh, an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, explains why he thinks schools can’t manage poverty in USA Today.

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."