AM News: NYT Columnist Chronicles TN "Race" Challenges

Tennessee’s Rules on Teacher Evaluations Bring Frustration NYT (Winerip): The new rules, enacted at the start of the school year, require Mr. Shelton to do as many observations for his strongest teachers — four a year — as for his weakest. 

Sexual Harassment Pervasive In U.S. Middle And High Schools, Survey Finds AP (HuffPost): During the 2010-11 school year, 48 percent of students in grades 7-12 experienced some form of sexual harassment.

W.Va. aiming to protect LGBT students from bullies AP: A proposed anti-bullying policy for West Virginia schools acknowledges that sexual orientation and gender identity are common reasons for harassment.

Apple Woos Educators With Trips to Silicon Valley NYT:  The representative traveled to Cupertino for the meeting but hung in the background. The sales team wore ties, and the engineers and executives dressed casually. Sales pitches took a back seat to conversations and presentations about how students use computers. via @gothamschools

Excavating key differences among GOP candidates AP:  The Republican field mostly opposes giving education benefits or other social services to the children of illegal immigrants; Perry defends Texas's record of doing so.

MORE NEWS ITEMS INSIDE

Focus on test scores may be pushing some teachers to cheat L.A. Times: Documents and interviews suggest that an increasing focus on test scores has created an atmosphere of such intimidation that the idea teachers would cheat has become plausible.

Feds Press Ala. Schools for Attendance Data EdWeek: As litigation over Alabama's tough new immigration law continues, federal civil rights authorities have ramped up pressure on the state's public schools to show they are not violating federal law by denying students access to schooling because of their immigration status.

Washington-area schools confront the 'gifted gap' The Washington Post: The budding scholars in Alexandria’s gifted ­classes are bright and curious enough to make any teacher beam, but these days they’re also an emblem of what the school system calls one of its greatest failures: a lack of diversity among the academic elite.

Shaking up the status quo in L.A. schools LAT:  A disparate alliance called Don't Hold Us Back is calling on L.A. Unified and the teachers union to lay down their weapons in contract negotiations and hammer out some big-ticket reforms.

Merger of Memphis and County School Districts Revives Challenges NYT:  Kenya Bradshaw, who was recently elected secretary of a separate 21-member commission set up to recommend policies for combining the new districts, sees the merger as a chance for Memphis “to re-envision its educational system.”