AM News: Districts Cutting PD During Key School Year

Sequestration Effects: 59 Percent of Districts Cut Professional Development PoliticsK12: Districts are dealing withautomatic, across-the-board trigger cuts of federal education funding by slicing professional development (59 percent of districts), eliminating personnel (53 percent), increasing class size (48 percent), and deferring technology purchases (46 percent).

Obama pushes ambitious Internet access plan Washington Post: There’s just one catch: The effort would cost billions of dollars, and Obama wants to pay for it by raising fees for mobile-phone users. Doing that relies on the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency that has the power to approve or reject the plan.

Charter partnership gives L.A. Unified school new name and outlook LA Times: In an unprecedented partnership, the L.A. Unified School District has joined forces with Crown Prep, an outside charter operator, to run the persistently low-performing campus south of downtown.

Top Obama Higher Education Official, Resigns Huffington Post: Her departure thins out the ranks of the Education Department's first-term upper echelons. Until recently, the department lacked heads for its preschool and civil rights offices, and a general counsel. The department has "acting" leaders in charge of "innovation and improvement," "planning, evaluation and policy development" and communications.

Frank DeAngelis, Columbine High School Principal, To Retire HuffPost: In a moving letter to parents, DeAngelis announced his plans to retire after this school year and reflected on his time at Columbine. "I felt it might be time to retire before a student informs me that I taught their grandparents," he wrote.

Chicago school closings worry poor neighborhood AP: To Carolyn Lang, West Pullman Elementary is more than the school across the street her children attended a quarter-century ago....

Hacking Real Things Becomes Child's Play At This Camp NPR: Armed with technology know-how, teens and preteens are learning to hack everyday items and find bugs for major tech giants. Their work can pay off, with companies offering rewards for fixes.

In Testing, a Principal Leans on Her Experience NYT (Winerip): A principal believes it is her job is to shield her students from the state’s ever-expanding standardized testing and to speak out about its reliability.

New LA Unified school year starts with imporant classroom changes KPCC: Students will also notice a different teaching style, Zimmer said. This is the year California public schools are phasing in the Common Core, a new set of rules for skills that teachers are expected to teach students.