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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
After a long stretch as the law of the land, annual standardized tests are being put to, well, the test. (NPR)
A recent study by Gallup shows that just 30 percent of teachers are “actively engaged” in their jobs. The study also estimates that teachers who aren’t engaged account for 2.3 million missed workdays every year.
(Education Week)
Nikole Hannah-Jones talked about her article in The Atlantic on schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama ahead of the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. She concluded that school desegregation in Alabama was a success story until freed from court supervision in 1998, and that “many schools across the nation are quietly resegregating.” (C-SPAN)
Okay, not everybody. The venerable publishing company is trying to reinvent itself for the Digital Age—in the most fraught, political, emotion-racked field there is: your children’s education. That’s stirring up a lot of anger. (Fortune)
Walk through a typical public school, and you see students, sitting in rows of identical desks, listening to teachers talk. Unless the teacher is particularly inspiring, half of the students are zoning out. This isn’t just a problem for teachers, half of whom leave the profession within their first five years. It’s also a problem for their pupils: Disengaged teenagers do not make the best students. (The Washington Post)
New York
Chancellor Carmen Fariña is expected to announce changes on Thursday that will restore a centralized hierarchy to New York City’s schools, largely dispensing with one of the core management philosophies of the previous mayoral administration. (The New York Times)