INCLUSION OF “DEEPER LEARNING” COMPETENCIES VARIES IN STATE WAIVER APPLICATIONS, NEW ALLIANCE REPORT FINDS: Report Argues That Students Need Deeper Learning Skills to Graduate from High School Ready for College and a Career: State applications for waivers under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act vary in the degree to which “deeper learning” skills are reflected in the standards, accountability systems, professional development, and teacher evaluations proposed by states, according to a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education. The report, Providing Greater Opportunities for Deeper Learning in NCLB Waivers, finds that state plans tend to generally reflect deeper learning competencies in their college- and career-ready standards but not in their teacher professional development and evaluation systems. It argues that deeper learning provides students with the deep content knowledge they need to succeed after high school and the skills that today’s jobs demand.

NATION’S REPORT CARD: Average Eighth-Grade Science Score Increases; Achievement Gaps Narrow, But Large Gaps Remain: The average eighth-grade science score increased from 150 in 2009 to 152 in 2011, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in science, also known as the Nation’s Report Card. The report card also finds that the percentages of students performing at or above the “basic” and “proficient” levels were higher in 2011 than in 2009, while there was no significant change in the percentage of students at the “advanced” level.

MAPPING A PERSONALIZED LEARNING JOURNEY: New Report Links Students’ Interest in STEM to Technology in Classroom: A survey of students and educators finds children are more likely to have an interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields when their classroom’s instructional model incorporates personalized learning strategies, digital technology, and social media. The survey results are contained in Mapping a Personalized Learning Journey—K–12 Students and Parents Connect the Dots with Digital Learning, from Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up 2011 National Research Project, which gathered its data from an online survey completed by more than 416,000 K–12 students, parents, teachers, administrators.

PREPARING ALL TEACHERS TO MEET THE NEEDS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS: New Report Identifies Promising Practices With ELL Students That General Education Teachers Can Employ: Noting that an estimated 25 percent of children in the United States are from immigrant families and live in households where a language other than English is spoken, a new report from the Center for American Progress offers promising practices that all teachers can employ when working with these students. Drawing from recent research identifying what English-as-a-second-language (ESL) and bilingual teachers should know, the report applies foundational knowledge about English language learners (ELLs) that could serve all teachers, including general education teachers, who educate these students in their classrooms.

YOU TAKE THE HIGH ROAD AND I’LL TAKE THE LOW ROAD: As Appropriations Process Begins, Different Spending Approaches Likely to Delay Process Until After November Elections: As Congress gets to work determining how much federal money various departments and programs will receive this year, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have set discretionary spending limits that are approximately $19 billion apart—a development that is likely to delay the appropriations process until after the November elections.

TRANSFORMING CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION: Obama Administration Releases Blueprint to Make Career and Technical Education More Rigorous, Relevant, and Results Driven: On April 19, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released the Obama administration’s blueprint to transform career and technical education (CTE) by reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (Perkins) Act of 2006.

HIDDEN HOMELESS: Bureaucratic Red Tape Leaves 715,238 Eligible Homeless Children Without Support in United States, New Alliance Analysis Finds:Approximately 77 percent of students in the United States identified as homeless by the U.S. Department of Education are ineligible for homeless services from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) because of red tape, according to a new analysis by the Alliance for Excellent Education. 

OFF THE CLOCK: New Report Examines How Extended Time Can Impact Student Learning:While acknowledging that support and funding for extended learning time (ELT) have grown considerably in the past several years, a new report from Education Sector finds that more time is not necessarily the cure for poor student performance. Instead, the report, Off the Clock: What More Time Can (and Can’t) Do for School Turnarounds, argues that time, like money, is only a resource, but whether it will help children learn depends on how it is used. 

Webinar Examines How Schools and Districts Can Leverage Time Beyond School to Accelerate Student Achievement: On April 19, the Coalition for a College- and Career-Ready America held a webinar, “Leveraging the Time Beyond School to Accelerate Student Achievement,” that examined how student achievement can be improved and accelerated when schools and districts rethink and reconfigure what happens during and beyond the traditional six-hour school day.