AM News: NYC Parent Organizing Group Expands To Boston

Out-of-state group touting charter schools expands to Boston Boston Globe: Families for Excellent Schools , a nonprofit that has been mobilizing parents in New York City to push for more charter schools is expanding to Boston, a potential boost for local charter school supporters seeking to rebound after a crushing defeat last month. 

Celebrated Trial Lawyer to Head Group Challenging Teacher Tenure NYT: Mr. Boies, the son of two public schoolteachers, is a lifelong liberal who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore and prosecuted Microsoft in the Clinton Administration’s antitrust suit. In aligning himself with a cause that is bitterly opposed by teachers’ unions, he is emblematic of an increasingly fractured relationship between the Democrats and the teachers’ unions.

Amid Criticism, States Gear Up For Common Core NPR: Delaware Gov. Jack Markell co-chaired the Common Core State Standards Initiative. He speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about the set of standards, and responds to its critics.

Legislatures taking state education into their own hands Washington Post: The backlash against the Common Core has prompted lawmakers in at least 12 states to get more involved in setting their own K-12 academic standards, injecting politics into a process usually conducted in obscurity by bureaucrats.

Debunking Common Myths About The Common Core NPR: Many people don't realize it's a set of standards, not a curriculum. NPR's Eric Westervelt talks with education reporter Cory Turner about other misconceptions about the Common Core standards.

More news below (and throughout the day at @alexanderrusso).

Forgoing School To Pay The Bills NPR: In one predominantly Latino neighborhood outside of Washington, D.C., young people are working instead of going to school at four times the national average.

D.C. charter school educates parents alongside children WPost: The images in the book were bright and the words simple, but many of the women in the classroom hesitated as they sounded out each sentence.

'You Don't Really Know Us,' Chicago Kids Tell News Media NPR: Tired of bad publicity, fifth-graders write an op-ed for The Chicago Tribune that includes this line: "This isn't Chi-raq. This is home. This is us.

L.A. Unified school board race turns negative, focuses on reputation LA Times: George McKenna has the sort of resume that would appear to make him a natural frontrunner in an important contest this month for the Los Angeles Board of Education. 

In Louisville, Ky., Minecraft Teaches Math NPR: The Common Core standards have generated lots of attention and controversy, but what do they look like in a classroom? The NPR Ed team continues its summer series from a fifth-grade math lesson.

 

Comments

[Bruce]

In response to Governor Markell: with Common Core, you're moving from shooting at an eight-foot basket to one at nine feet: you're still playing an international game at a lower level, even if nine does feel higher than eight. But the state legislatures aren't going to solve the problem; you're likely to end up with baskets and courts in all kinds of sizes and shapes, with incoherent rules that don't make sense. No, likely the only people who can revise the Common Core are those who set it up, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State Schools Officers, who need to raise the mathematics standards, and differentiate them in high school; but more important for the United States is to remove No Child Left Behind's annual external testing, and this should happen by rewriting the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in a manner resembling the UK's Education Act 2011, so as to increase accountability for the right people, students, in other words those who want to go to college and to receive public funding for their educations and who should show that they have earned continuing public support through a public demonstration of their qualifying achievement.