In the nation’s most economically segregated city, an innovative new approach to school integration designed to address poverty, trauma, and parental choice is working
One year after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, students and educators are still grappling with the physical and emotional damage left by the storm, reports Education Week’s Andrew Ujifusa.
In the year since #HurricaneMaria, Education Week has been following the story of Puerto Rico’s devastation and the island’s slow rebuilding as seen through the eyes of educators and students. See all of our coverage here: https://t.co/kepJp7wLpQpic.twitter.com/9BV3r8IYub
In Memphis, a decision to halt an investigation into improper grade changing is raising questions about whether anyone will be held accountable, writes Chalkbeat’s Laura Faith Kebede.
School taxes, school choice, Ten Commandments displays in schools and education governance questions are all hot topics in education that voters will weigh in on at the ballot box in November.
One year ago, Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico. For the educators, students, and parents who remain on the island, nothing has been the same since.
In sheer practical terms, they are grappling with lingering storm damage, shifts in school assignments after hundreds of buildings were closed in the wake of the hurricane, and the implications of a system-wide reorganization.
One year ago, Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico. For the educators, students, and parents who remain on the island, nothing has been the same since.
In sheer practical terms, they are grappling with lingering storm damage, shifts in school assignments after hundreds of buildings were closed in the wake of the hurricane, and the implications of a system-wide reorganization.
Stark differences in how Colorado’s two would-be governors plan to tackle early childhood issues were clear at a candidate forum Monday evening.
Republican lieutenant governor candidate Lang Sias, who stood in for gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton, said Republicans would focus public funds on narrower programs that benefit the poorest children.
With less than two months until Election Day, the effort to pass two referendums to increase funding for Indianapolis Public Schools is gaining momentum. Almost every day, campaign workers are fanning out across Indianapolis to seek support from voters.
And Superintendent Lewis Ferebee is stopping by community meetings across the district to make his case that the district needs taxpayers’ help.
This multi-pronged approach illustrates how high the stakes are for the district, which aims to raise $272 million to prevent an even more dire financial situation.
Spending in the campaign for state superintendent of public instruction in California is expected to break records once again this fall, as charter school advocates and labor organizations focus on the race.
Although the Nov. 6 ballot will include races for governor and U.S. Senate, it is the nonpartisan contest between Democrats — Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond and Marshall Tuck, a former charter school executive — for an office with limited power that is expected to attract the most money during the general election.
So far Duval County’s three School Board races look like a lopsided battle for money.
On one side, three candidates endorsed by a host of business and political groups have amassed many times more money than their opponents. They say their fundraising success reflects broad support for their vision for Duval public schools.
On the other side are three financial underdogs who say voters are skeptical of so much money, suspecting there are strings attached.
A longstanding threat to charter school growth could become more pressing this year now that progressive Democrats are poised to claim more seats in New York’s State Senate.
More than half a dozen incumbent senators who have supported charter schools lost their primary challenges Thursday, leaving charter advocates without key allies in Albany at a time when lawmakers will have to act if many more of the publicly funded, privately managed schools are to open.
IT’S BEEN A ROUGH YEAR for education data – one that’s challenged the accuracy of federal databases, uncovered discrepancies that call into question major policy decisions and now, with another school year underway, one that will ask states, districts and schools to collect, report and use more data than ever before.
In a new radio documentary, APM Reports’ Emily Hanford looks at why teaching reading has become so controversial — and ineffective — in many U.S. classrooms.
As a nation, we've come to accept a high percentage of kids not reading well. But we shouldn't. Science shows clearly how kids learn to read and how they should be taught. Why are so many schools not doing it? https://t.co/Qt9y45Xmbv#TellEWA Listen on @EducatePodcast
At a time of federal “zero tolerance” policies on immigration, students from immigrant families in the Washington, D.C., area are struggling to stay focused on their academics, reports Jenny Abamu of WAMU.
Hope Brown can make $60 donating plasma from her blood cells twice in one week, and a little more if she sells some of her clothes at a consignment store. It’s usually just enough to cover an electric bill or a car payment. This financial juggling is now a part of her everyday life—something she never expected almost two decades ago when she earned a master’s degree in secondary education and became a high school history teacher. Brown often works from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Wisconsin’s massive gap in academic performance between its black and white students is under the spotlight of the governor’s race as the candidates blame each other for not doing more to address the persistent problem.
Wisconsin has held the distinction among states of having the largest gap in academic performance between its black and white students by some measures and that disparity has only shrunk slightly in the past 10 years, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
It was 2015 and Jack Silva, the chief academic officer for the public schools in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had a problem: Only 56 percent of third-graders in his district had scored proficient on the state reading test.
As students have returned to school, they have been greeted by teachers who, more likely than not, are white women. That means many students will be continuing to see teachers who are a different gender than they are, and a different skin color.
Does it matter? Yes, according to a significant body of research: Students tend to benefit from having teachers who look like them, especially nonwhite students.
Jalijah Jones, then a freshman at Kalamazoo Central High School in Michigan, remembers the punch of thousands of volts hitting his slight frame. At 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighing 120 pounds, he was small for his age.
He remembers four school security guards officers pushing him up against a hallway wall before a school police officer arrived and Tasered him. He remembers a feeling of intense cold as if his high school hallway had just turned into a walk-in freezer. He remembers falling to the ground, his muscles betraying his mind’s desire to stand.
State report cards coming out this week will have a long-delayed but controversial feature – awarding single overall grades for each school and district.
They’ll also be passing judgment on three districts in Ohio – East Cleveland, Warrensville Heights and Trotwood-Madison near Dayton. If those districts receive an overall F grade, the state will step in and take partial control of them.
In Montgomery County, a Washington suburb with sought-after public schools, Bethesda Elementary School opened an eight-classroom expansion three years ago to relieve pressure on the overcrowded campus.
A year later, the school spilled over again into a portable classroom. When this school year started Tuesday , it had four portables and 639 children — 80 more than it’s built to hold and 100 more than school system demographers predicted six years ago.
The momentum from the historic wave of statewide teacher strikes last spring seems set to continue this school year.
After thousands of teachers in a half-dozen states walked out of their classrooms to protest issues like low pay and cuts to school funding—to varying degrees of success—some onlookers are predicting this school year will see continued activism.
If Democrats take control of the House of Representatives next year, expect civil rights to grab the spotlight and for congressional subpoenas in the name of education oversight to become more popular. But you may not see as much of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as some might think.
Democrats think 2018 is their year, and they’re using education—and educators—to make their case.
On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee highlighted teachers and others with education connections who are running for Congress and other elected offices. The committee said Dems are “running and winning by making education central to their campaigns” and that these candidates “want better pay for teachers and better schools for every child.”
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Drew Edmondson released his education platform on Thursday and drew an endorsement from former University of Oklahoma President David Boren.
Boren is a former Oklahoma governor and U.S. senator.
Edmondson, a former Oklahoma attorney general, teacher, legislator and district attorney, faces Tulsa businessman Kevin Stitt, the Republican nominee, in the Nov. 6 general election. Libertarian Chris Powell is also on the ballot.
Thousands of additional children will soon be eligible for special education services after state officials eliminated an illegal cap that artificially tamped down Texas special education rolls for a decade.
But even if the state fully funds the estimated $3 billion cost of providing that extra instruction, educators say one big question remains: Where will schools find up to 9,000 new special education teachers?
While many Chicago Public School students have lost a classmate to gun violence, staff say it’s especially common in alternative high schools.
Some 425 Chicago public school students died between the 2013-14 and 2016-17 school years, according to a Chicago Reporter analysis of student transfer records. One in four attended an alternative high school, though these schools accounted for only around 2 percent of the district’s enrollment in that time period. Most of the alternative high schools where students died had a student body that was nearly all African-American.
To an anguished question that often follows school shootings — Why didn’t anyone spot the warning signs? — these companies have answered with a business model: 24/7 monitoring of student activity on social media.
Often without advance warning to students and parents, the companies flag posts like those of Auseel Yousefi, who was expelled in 2013 from his high school in Huntsville, Ala., for Twitter posts made on the last day of his junior year. “A kid has a right to be who they want outside of school,” he said later.
The National Education Association is hoping a crash course in campaigning will help educators running for public office, reports Education Week’s Sarah Schwartz.
The nation's largest teachers' union held a two-day training for teachers who are running for political office. They practiced cold-calling for donations and learned other campaign strategies. @s_e_schwartz reports from the ground: https://t.co/ExK3VGidQo#tellEWA
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos came to Washington to promote the cause of her life — school choice. Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. President Trump had promised a $20 billion program.
But more than a year and a half later, the federal push is all but dead.
That’s partly because DeVos herself emerged badly damaged from a brutal confirmation process, with few people — even in her own party — interested in taking up her pet cause.
Richard Carranza is eager to talk about segregation.
New York’s new schools chancellor wants to talk about how the nation’s largest school system is clustering the poorest children (mostly black and brown) in one set of classrooms, and the richest children (mostly white) in another set — and failing to live up to its progressive ideals.
The D.C. Auditor’s office says that the District’s principals are the most stressed in the nation, and the policy of only giving school leaders one-year contracts is largely to blame.
Red shirts and blouses had emerged as the official uniform of teacher uprisings against low pay that were spreading from West Virginia to Oklahoma and Kentucky under the rallying cry “Red for Ed.” Just one week earlier, a Facebook post by Noah Karvelis, a 23-year-old teacher in Phoenix, lit the spark in Arizona, asking teachers to wear red on March 7 to demand more money for the state’s chronically underfunded public schools.
Glancing at his arm, now fully extended and pointing slightly upward, Frisch realized something: He was inadvertently pantomiming the Nazi salute. Frisch is a practicing Quaker, but his father was Jewish, and two of his great-grandmothers were killed at Auschwitz. Mortified, he searched for some way to defuse the awkwardness of the moment. And then he said it: “Heil Hitler!”
At 19, Mario Martinez felt fortunate to have escaped his rough neighborhood and enrolled in a community college. But the odds that he would earn his degree and achieve the life he wanted were still against him.
Rather than a quick question-and-answer session, the senator talked for nearly 90 minutes about his high-profile efforts to turn around Newark’s failing schools with a $100 million grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its spectacular rollout on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show. He spoke about why he decided to tackle education reform and the difficult politics around reforming urban schools.
There’s no silver bullet when it comes to improving education in the state, says Bill Lee, Tennessee’s Republican candidate for governor.
“There’s no one answer to this — it’s going to be a broad approach,” Lee, a fourth generation cattle farmer and president of a $250 million home care services company, told Chalkbeat during a brief interview Wednesday.
Lee was in Memphis as part of a 95-county campaign tour, which included a stop at the Memphis charter Libertas School.
More students across Texas will be stuck in some of the state’s worst-performing schools next year as the number of failing campuses they’re allowed to leave behind plummets.
The Public Education Grant list gives families the right to transfer out of struggling schools and seek an education elsewhere, though few use the provision. Texas has 1,331 campuses identified on the PEG list this school year.
t’s not easy for Phil Roark to find the right employees. He’s the plant manager for Eaton Corp.’s Aerospace Group in Charleston, South Carolina. The parts that Eaton manufactures in this large, clean plant end up in airplanes, where they help control wing flaps and landing gear. The work is intricate. Parts are cut inside closed chambers by machines run off computers. Quality control is done by people looking through microscopes. It takes skill to do this kind of work, and Roark has been struggling to hire people.
New Mexico’s next governor will face an uphill climb when it comes to improving the state’s public education system.
While student proficiency scores and graduation rates have inched up during Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration, the state remains at or near the bottom of most national rankings assessing the quality of public education. As Martinez discovered, big steps are hard to come by.
The kindergarten year can be a critical one—setting the tone for students and influencing their academic success in elementary school and beyond. But of the 4 million children who will start kindergarten this year, an estimated one-third will have never been in a classroom before.
The transition to kindergarten can be overwhelming for those students and their parents.
Texas school districts and charter school groups cannot use state funding to provide teachers and other resources to school-aged children housed in migrant shelters, the Texas Education Agency said, throwing into question whether states have a role in educating minors who cross the border illegally.
In interviews and a 2016 climate survey, many say UF makes them feel their minority status, whether they’re the sole black student in Biochem or they’re assumed to be from the community college down the road. They say distressingly few professors look like them and that they’re treated as the de facto spokespeople for all things black.
They share stories: How a professor mixes up the names of the only two black women in class. How white students see them at night and cross the street.
In a major blow to the national protest movement against classroom budget cuts and stagnant teachers’ salaries, the Arizona Supreme Court blocked a ballot initiative Wednesday that would have increased taxes on the wealthy to help raise money for schools.
To address chronic absenteeism, schools are experimenting with punishments and rewards, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Tawnell Hobbs.
With the number of chronically-absent students at 8 million, schools are finding ways to get them to class — from installing laundry rooms to raffling TVs to fining parents. This school year, some states will consider truant kids in school ratings https://t.co/xB4NmTFGXA#tellewa
As The Oregonian’s Bethany Barnes reports, the reopening of a historic middle school is shedding light on Portland’s complicated history of educating black children.
A look at the revival of Portland's Harriet Tubman Middle School, through the eyes of a parent who is counting on the school to do right by her daughter:
For the Associated Press, Sally Ho examines Bill Gates’ investments in education reform, new and old.
Covering philanthropy strategy in education, casual readers often ask me why there's such tension over @BillGates' money in schools reform. Here's a quick-hit overview about the evolution of Gates' major programs, his motivations & the outcomes/ fallout: https://t.co/4dmz7JMv0w
The Floyd County Schools District earned numerous accolades for achievements on state tests, including multiple “District of Distinction” honors, and in 2016, a ranking of sixth statewide, but a scathing audit suggests that some in the district may have been more concerned with test results than the quality of education provided to students.
The Kentucky Department of Education required the school district to implement a corrective action plan this year, following an audit of the district’s services for children with special needs.
The Justice Department lent its support on Thursday to students who are suing Harvard University over affirmative action policies that they claim discriminate against Asian-American applicants, in a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
For many students, the path toward enrolling in a for-profit college starts with an advertisement—maybe while browsing online or watching a favorite television show. Either way, the message is usually the same: Get off the couch and do something with your life.
78207: America’s Most Radical School Integration Experiment
In the nation’s most economically segregated city, an innovative new approach to school integration designed to address poverty, trauma, and parental choice is working
Georgia’s Separate and Unequal Special-Education System
A statewide network of schools for disabled students has trapped black children in neglect and isolation.
Sept. 14 – 20
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
One year after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, students and educators are still grappling with the physical and emotional damage left by the storm, reports Education Week’s Andrew Ujifusa.
In Memphis, a decision to halt an investigation into improper grade changing is raising questions about whether anyone will be held accountable, writes Chalkbeat’s Laura Faith Kebede.
State Ballot Measures Focus on School Funding, Social Issues
School taxes, school choice, Ten Commandments displays in schools and education governance questions are all hot topics in education that voters will weigh in on at the ballot box in November.
How Puerto Rico’s Educators See Their Schools a Year After Hurricane Maria
One year ago, Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico. For the educators, students, and parents who remain on the island, nothing has been the same since.
In sheer practical terms, they are grappling with lingering storm damage, shifts in school assignments after hundreds of buildings were closed in the wake of the hurricane, and the implications of a system-wide reorganization.
How Puerto Rico’s Educators See Their Schools a Year After Hurricane Maria
One year ago, Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico. For the educators, students, and parents who remain on the island, nothing has been the same since.
In sheer practical terms, they are grappling with lingering storm damage, shifts in school assignments after hundreds of buildings were closed in the wake of the hurricane, and the implications of a system-wide reorganization.
Three Things We Heard at a Gubernatorial Candidates Forum on Early Childhood
Stark differences in how Colorado’s two would-be governors plan to tackle early childhood issues were clear at a candidate forum Monday evening.
Republican lieutenant governor candidate Lang Sias, who stood in for gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton, said Republicans would focus public funds on narrower programs that benefit the poorest children.
Idaho Teachers’ Union Endorses GOP Candidate for Re-election Bid to Congress
For the second time this year, the state’s largest teachers’ union has thrown its support behind a prominent Republican candidate.
On Wednesday, the Idaho Education Association endorsed U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson in the Nov. 6 election.
In announcing the endorsement, the IEA touted the 20-year incumbent’s work on the House Appropriations Committee.
The Race Is On to Convince Voters to Give More Money to Indianapolis Public Schools
With less than two months until Election Day, the effort to pass two referendums to increase funding for Indianapolis Public Schools is gaining momentum. Almost every day, campaign workers are fanning out across Indianapolis to seek support from voters.
And Superintendent Lewis Ferebee is stopping by community meetings across the district to make his case that the district needs taxpayers’ help.
This multi-pronged approach illustrates how high the stakes are for the district, which aims to raise $272 million to prevent an even more dire financial situation.
Spending on California Schools Chief Race Expected to Set Records Again
Spending in the campaign for state superintendent of public instruction in California is expected to break records once again this fall, as charter school advocates and labor organizations focus on the race.
Although the Nov. 6 ballot will include races for governor and U.S. Senate, it is the nonpartisan contest between Democrats — Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond and Marshall Tuck, a former charter school executive — for an office with limited power that is expected to attract the most money during the general election.
Big Gaps in Campaign Money in All 3 Duval School Board Races
So far Duval County’s three School Board races look like a lopsided battle for money.
On one side, three candidates endorsed by a host of business and political groups have amassed many times more money than their opponents. They say their fundraising success reflects broad support for their vision for Duval public schools.
On the other side are three financial underdogs who say voters are skeptical of so much money, suspecting there are strings attached.
Progressive Democrats’ Surprise Wins in N.Y. Primaries Leave Charter Advocates in Limbo
A longstanding threat to charter school growth could become more pressing this year now that progressive Democrats are poised to claim more seats in New York’s State Senate.
More than half a dozen incumbent senators who have supported charter schools lost their primary challenges Thursday, leaving charter advocates without key allies in Albany at a time when lawmakers will have to act if many more of the publicly funded, privately managed schools are to open.
Incorrect Data Drives Major Education Decisions
IT’S BEEN A ROUGH YEAR for education data – one that’s challenged the accuracy of federal databases, uncovered discrepancies that call into question major policy decisions and now, with another school year underway, one that will ask states, districts and schools to collect, report and use more data than ever before.
Sept. 7 – 13
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
In a new radio documentary, APM Reports’ Emily Hanford looks at why teaching reading has become so controversial — and ineffective — in many U.S. classrooms.
At a time of federal “zero tolerance” policies on immigration, students from immigrant families in the Washington, D.C., area are struggling to stay focused on their academics, reports Jenny Abamu of WAMU.
Exactly How Teachers Came to Be So Underpaid in America
Hope Brown can make $60 donating plasma from her blood cells twice in one week, and a little more if she sells some of her clothes at a consignment store. It’s usually just enough to cover an electric bill or a car payment. This financial juggling is now a part of her everyday life—something she never expected almost two decades ago when she earned a master’s degree in secondary education and became a high school history teacher. Brown often works from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Wis. Gubernatorial Candidates Blame Each Other for Failing to Narrow Achievement Gap
Wisconsin’s massive gap in academic performance between its black and white students is under the spotlight of the governor’s race as the candidates blame each other for not doing more to address the persistent problem.
Wisconsin has held the distinction among states of having the largest gap in academic performance between its black and white students by some measures and that disparity has only shrunk slightly in the past 10 years, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read?
It was 2015 and Jack Silva, the chief academic officer for the public schools in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had a problem: Only 56 percent of third-graders in his district had scored proficient on the state reading test.
Does Teacher Diversity Matter for Students’ Learning?
As students have returned to school, they have been greeted by teachers who, more likely than not, are white women. That means many students will be continuing to see teachers who are a different gender than they are, and a different skin color.
Does it matter? Yes, according to a significant body of research: Students tend to benefit from having teachers who look like them, especially nonwhite students.
The Other Side of School Safety: Students Are Getting Tasered and Beaten by Police
Jalijah Jones, then a freshman at Kalamazoo Central High School in Michigan, remembers the punch of thousands of volts hitting his slight frame. At 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighing 120 pounds, he was small for his age.
He remembers four school security guards officers pushing him up against a hallway wall before a school police officer arrived and Tasered him. He remembers a feeling of intense cold as if his high school hallway had just turned into a walk-in freezer. He remembers falling to the ground, his muscles betraying his mind’s desire to stand.
Will Your School Be Graded A or F? Overall Report Card Grades Return This Week
State report cards coming out this week will have a long-delayed but controversial feature – awarding single overall grades for each school and district.
They’ll also be passing judgment on three districts in Ohio – East Cleveland, Warrensville Heights and Trotwood-Madison near Dayton. If those districts receive an overall F grade, the state will step in and take partial control of them.
As D.C.-Area Schools Grapple With Overcrowding, Parents Wonder Why Enrollment Projections Are so off
In Montgomery County, a Washington suburb with sought-after public schools, Bethesda Elementary School opened an eight-classroom expansion three years ago to relieve pressure on the overcrowded campus.
A year later, the school spilled over again into a portable classroom. When this school year started Tuesday , it had four portables and 639 children — 80 more than it’s built to hold and 100 more than school system demographers predicted six years ago.
Teacher Strikes Are Heating Up in More States
The momentum from the historic wave of statewide teacher strikes last spring seems set to continue this school year.
After thousands of teachers in a half-dozen states walked out of their classrooms to protest issues like low pay and cuts to school funding—to varying degrees of success—some onlookers are predicting this school year will see continued activism.
If Democrats Take the House, Here’s What Awaits Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, and ESSA
If Democrats take control of the House of Representatives next year, expect civil rights to grab the spotlight and for congressional subpoenas in the name of education oversight to become more popular. But you may not see as much of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as some might think.
The DNC Says ‘Education Is on the Ballot.’ Here’s What That Does and Doesn’t Mean.
Democrats think 2018 is their year, and they’re using education—and educators—to make their case.
On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee highlighted teachers and others with education connections who are running for Congress and other elected offices. The committee said Dems are “running and winning by making education central to their campaigns” and that these candidates “want better pay for teachers and better schools for every child.”
Democrat in Okla. Governor’s Race Outlines Education Platform
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Drew Edmondson released his education platform on Thursday and drew an endorsement from former University of Oklahoma President David Boren.
Boren is a former Oklahoma governor and U.S. senator.
Edmondson, a former Oklahoma attorney general, teacher, legislator and district attorney, faces Tulsa businessman Kevin Stitt, the Republican nominee, in the Nov. 6 general election. Libertarian Chris Powell is also on the ballot.
Texas Expects Thousands More Special Education Students. But Where Are The Teachers?
Thousands of additional children will soon be eligible for special education services after state officials eliminated an illegal cap that artificially tamped down Texas special education rolls for a decade.
But even if the state fully funds the estimated $3 billion cost of providing that extra instruction, educators say one big question remains: Where will schools find up to 9,000 new special education teachers?
Alternative Schools Bear The Brunt Of Student Deaths In Chicago
While many Chicago Public School students have lost a classmate to gun violence, staff say it’s especially common in alternative high schools.
Some 425 Chicago public school students died between the 2013-14 and 2016-17 school years, according to a Chicago Reporter analysis of student transfer records. One in four attended an alternative high school, though these schools accounted for only around 2 percent of the district’s enrollment in that time period. Most of the alternative high schools where students died had a student body that was nearly all African-American.
These Firms Are Monitoring Students on Social Media to Prevent School Violence. Does It Work?
To an anguished question that often follows school shootings — Why didn’t anyone spot the warning signs? — these companies have answered with a business model: 24/7 monitoring of student activity on social media.
Often without advance warning to students and parents, the companies flag posts like those of Auseel Yousefi, who was expelled in 2013 from his high school in Huntsville, Ala., for Twitter posts made on the last day of his junior year. “A kid has a right to be who they want outside of school,” he said later.
August 31 – September 6
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
The National Education Association is hoping a crash course in campaigning will help educators running for public office, reports Education Week’s Sarah Schwartz.
For the Tampa Bay Times, Claire McNeill examines why some students of color feel isolated at Florida’s flagship university.
In Washington state, Katie Gillespie of The Columbian asks teachers on the picket lines what keeps them going despite frustrations with the job.
The Education Of Betsy DeVos: Why Her School Choice Agenda Has Not Advanced
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos came to Washington to promote the cause of her life — school choice. Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. President Trump had promised a $20 billion program.
But more than a year and a half later, the federal push is all but dead.
That’s partly because DeVos herself emerged badly damaged from a brutal confirmation process, with few people — even in her own party — interested in taking up her pet cause.
New York’s Schools Chancellor Is Talking About Integration. Can He Make It Happen?
Richard Carranza is eager to talk about segregation.
New York’s new schools chancellor wants to talk about how the nation’s largest school system is clustering the poorest children (mostly black and brown) in one set of classrooms, and the richest children (mostly white) in another set — and failing to live up to its progressive ideals.
Short Contracts, Tight Budgets Make D.C.’s Principals More Stressed than the National Average
The D.C. Auditor’s office says that the District’s principals are the most stressed in the nation, and the policy of only giving school leaders one-year contracts is largely to blame.
Arizona Lawmakers Cut Education Budgets. Then Teachers Got Angry.
Red shirts and blouses had emerged as the official uniform of teacher uprisings against low pay that were spreading from West Virginia to Oklahoma and Kentucky under the rallying cry “Red for Ed.” Just one week earlier, a Facebook post by Noah Karvelis, a 23-year-old teacher in Phoenix, lit the spark in Arizona, asking teachers to wear red on March 7 to demand more money for the state’s chronically underfunded public schools.
A Teacher Made a Hitler Joke in the Classroom. It Tore the School Apart.
Glancing at his arm, now fully extended and pointing slightly upward, Frisch realized something: He was inadvertently pantomiming the Nazi salute. Frisch is a practicing Quaker, but his father was Jewish, and two of his great-grandmothers were killed at Auschwitz. Mortified, he searched for some way to defuse the awkwardness of the moment. And then he said it: “Heil Hitler!”
He Bet that College Would Help Him Move Up. Was It a Good Bet?
At 19, Mario Martinez felt fortunate to have escaped his rough neighborhood and enrolled in a community college. But the odds that he would earn his degree and achieve the life he wanted were still against him.
EXCLUSIVE: Senator Cory Booker Speaks Out About Newark School Reform, Equity, and Mark Zuckerberg’s Millions Ahead of a Possible Run for the Presidency
Rather than a quick question-and-answer session, the senator talked for nearly 90 minutes about his high-profile efforts to turn around Newark’s failing schools with a $100 million grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its spectacular rollout on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show. He spoke about why he decided to tackle education reform and the difficult politics around reforming urban schools.
Tennessee’s Republican Candidate for Governor Touts School Choice, Testing Changes
There’s no silver bullet when it comes to improving education in the state, says Bill Lee, Tennessee’s Republican candidate for governor.
“There’s no one answer to this — it’s going to be a broad approach,” Lee, a fourth generation cattle farmer and president of a $250 million home care services company, told Chalkbeat during a brief interview Wednesday.
Lee was in Memphis as part of a 95-county campaign tour, which included a stop at the Memphis charter Libertas School.
Texas Has Made It Tougher for Students to Leave Struggling Schools
More students across Texas will be stuck in some of the state’s worst-performing schools next year as the number of failing campuses they’re allowed to leave behind plummets.
The Public Education Grant list gives families the right to transfer out of struggling schools and seek an education elsewhere, though few use the provision. Texas has 1,331 campuses identified on the PEG list this school year.
Rediscovering Apprenticeships
t’s not easy for Phil Roark to find the right employees. He’s the plant manager for Eaton Corp.’s Aerospace Group in Charleston, South Carolina. The parts that Eaton manufactures in this large, clean plant end up in airplanes, where they help control wing flaps and landing gear. The work is intricate. Parts are cut inside closed chambers by machines run off computers. Quality control is done by people looking through microscopes. It takes skill to do this kind of work, and Roark has been struggling to hire people.
Education a Key Issue for New Mexico Candidates
New Mexico’s next governor will face an uphill climb when it comes to improving the state’s public education system.
While student proficiency scores and graduation rates have inched up during Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration, the state remains at or near the bottom of most national rankings assessing the quality of public education. As Martinez discovered, big steps are hard to come by.
Practicing Kindergarten: How a Summer Program Eases Kids Into Learning
The kindergarten year can be a critical one—setting the tone for students and influencing their academic success in elementary school and beyond. But of the 4 million children who will start kindergarten this year, an estimated one-third will have never been in a classroom before.
The transition to kindergarten can be overwhelming for those students and their parents.
TEA: Schools Cannot Use State Funds to Educate Migrant Children in Shelters
Texas school districts and charter school groups cannot use state funding to provide teachers and other resources to school-aged children housed in migrant shelters, the Texas Education Agency said, throwing into question whether states have a role in educating minors who cross the border illegally.
At UF, Black Students Feel a Reckoning on Race is Long Overdue
In interviews and a 2016 climate survey, many say UF makes them feel their minority status, whether they’re the sole black student in Biochem or they’re assumed to be from the community college down the road. They say distressingly few professors look like them and that they’re treated as the de facto spokespeople for all things black.
They share stories: How a professor mixes up the names of the only two black women in class. How white students see them at night and cross the street.
Arizona Supreme Court Blocks a Ballot Measure, and Schools Miss Out on $690 Million
In a major blow to the national protest movement against classroom budget cuts and stagnant teachers’ salaries, the Arizona Supreme Court blocked a ballot initiative Wednesday that would have increased taxes on the wealthy to help raise money for schools.
August 24 – August 30
Here's what we're reading by EWA members this week
To address chronic absenteeism, schools are experimenting with punishments and rewards, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Tawnell Hobbs.
As The Oregonian’s Bethany Barnes reports, the reopening of a historic middle school is shedding light on Portland’s complicated history of educating black children.
For the Associated Press, Sally Ho examines Bill Gates’ investments in education reform, new and old.
Kentucky District Put Kids In Special Education To Get Better Scores
The Floyd County Schools District earned numerous accolades for achievements on state tests, including multiple “District of Distinction” honors, and in 2016, a ranking of sixth statewide, but a scathing audit suggests that some in the district may have been more concerned with test results than the quality of education provided to students.
The Kentucky Department of Education required the school district to implement a corrective action plan this year, following an audit of the district’s services for children with special needs.
Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Affirmative Action Win Justice Dept. Support
The Justice Department lent its support on Thursday to students who are suing Harvard University over affirmative action policies that they claim discriminate against Asian-American applicants, in a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
For-Profit Colleges Leave Students Swimming in Debt
For many students, the path toward enrolling in a for-profit college starts with an advertisement—maybe while browsing online or watching a favorite television show. Either way, the message is usually the same: Get off the couch and do something with your life.