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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
President Barack Obama’s push to start taxing college-saving accounts, including the popular “529” accounts, would affect millions of Americans who are stashing money for their children’s education, stirring debate about how to structure federal student aid and how to define the middle class. (The Wall Street Journal)
There are enormous inequalities in education in the United States. A child born into a poor family has only a 9 percent chance of getting a college degree, but the odds are 54 percent for a child in a high-income family. These gaps open early, with poor children less prepared than their kindergarten classmates. (New York Times)
A Republican-controlled Senate committee began work Wednesday on revising the landmark No Child Left Behind education law, focusing first on federally mandated testing of America’s schoolchildren. (ABC News)
Right off the bat, the president touted the fact that more kids are graduating from high school and college than ever before. “We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive world,” he said in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech. “And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record.” (NPR)
A lawsuit that seeks to equalize funding between charter schools and traditional public schools could be an important test of the District’s authority to govern its own budget and affairs. (The Washington Post)
New York
In his fifth State of the State Address, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a number of education reforms that have put him in direct conflict with the state’s teachers unions. (Education News)