AM News: Senators Murray & Alexander Push To Revamp NCLB

Democrats and Republicans Agree: It's Time To Rewrite No Child Left Behind HuffPost: Murray articulated a similar position on testing in an interview Tuesday. "We have to fix the redundant and unnecessary testing within the system broadly," she told The Huffington Post.  But, she said in her speech, "That doesn't mean we should roll back standards or accountability." She further defended the need for some degree of standardized testing by invoking a reason more often used on the right: taxpayer money.

Senators set stage for debate about federal education law Washington Post: Top Republican and Democratic negotiators over federal education law each took to the Senate floor Tuesday to lay out their sometimes conflicting visions for rewriting No Child Left Behind.Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chair of the Senate education panel, emphasized that he wants to shrink the federal footprint in local education, saying the Obama administration has acted as a “national school board” and that Congress ought to cede power back to states to decide how best to educate K-12 students. 

Why Google Didn't Sign Obama-Backed Student Privacy Pledge Wall Street Journal: Other Google student-privacy policies are more nuanced than the pledge Obama endorsed Monday. The company says it doesn't sell Google Apps for Education data to third parties and it only shares personal information with third parties in “exceptional ...

The Most Controversial Woman in School Reform NY Magazine: Even in school reform’s new lawsuit era, hand-to-hand combat is still the preferred mode of resolving—or not resolving—­conflict. Brown has become the latest vilified figure in a decades-long PR battle—between the teachers union, one of the last powerful unions in the U.S., and “reformers”—to rival the ugliest type of corporate warfare.

Teacher survey: Change tenure, layoff laws EdSource Today: Gov. Jerry Brown said last week he's open to changing tenure and other teacher employment laws at issue in the Vergara v. State of California lawsuit, and most teachers in a new survey say they want to change them, too.

Speak & Spell: A History Hacked Education: The Speak & Spell – one of the most iconic toys of the 1980s – is a teaching machine. By that, I don’t mean simply that it’s an electronic, educational device. It is that, sure. The Speak & Spell is a teaching machine specifically in the tradition of B. F. Skinner, reflecting some of both Skinner’s design principles and his theories of learning, decades older than the popular Texas Instruments device. Rather than selecting the correctly-spelled word in a multiple choice quiz, for the example, the Speak & Spell prompts the user to construct the response. It praises; it corrects.

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

For-Profit Charters Set To Run Pa. District's Schools NPR: Pennsylvania's worst-performing district would have all of its schools run by a private charter school company.

North Carolina Rethinks The Common Core NPR: Some states have been quick to drop the new national academic standards — but North Carolina is taking its time before deciding the Common Core's future in 2015.

Louisiana’s Common Core debacle Hechinger Report: Brett Geymann, a Republican and one of several legislators who fought unsuccessfully to scrap the standards during the last session, says he will be rallying the troops again. Last year, many anti-Common Core measures failed to make it through the legislature, but Geymann’s group was able to vote in parental review of Common Core textbooks, making it easier for parents to banish the most contentious material.

Michigan Governor Names Fourth New Manager for Detroit Schools NYT: Detroit emerged late last year from emergency management and bankruptcy, but some officials worry that the woes of its public schools threaten to slow efforts to remake the city.

When Being a Valedictorian Isn’t Enough The Atlantic: An increasing emphasis on SAT scores is making it harder for students from immigrant and minority families to get into New York City's best public colleges.

A School Aide to the Disabled Sues New York City NYT: Lawyers representing Debra Fisher, an occupational therapist, demanded that the Education Department overturn her suspension for helping raise funds for a boy with cerebral palsy.

Delayed Start For Most Of DC Area's Schools WAMU: A lot of districts are on a two-hour delay, but some are closed for the day.