Beth’s Briefings (10-6-15)

Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:

 

Outgoing Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in a speech before an audience last week at the National Press Club, announced a new policy to reallocate state correctional-funding dollars to raises for teachers in the nation’s most underprivileged districts. (The Atlantic)

 

Last Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced his resignation. He’ll be replaced on an acting basis by Deputy Secretary John King, former commissioner of education for New York state. Duncan’s seven-year tenure was significant on many fronts. As he departs, it’s worth noting five key legacies — for better and worse. (The Hill)

 

President Obama made a fine choice on Friday in John King, a charter school advocate, to be his next Secretary of Education. Then again Arne Duncan, who is returning to Chicago at the end of the year after seven years as Secretary, also arrived with much promise only to run afoul of the antireform inertia in the Democratic Party. (The Wall Street Journal)

 

Our friends over at Planet Money built this interactive graphic that illuminates yet another aspect of the Education Department’s new College Scorecard. It shows the average annual price that families actually pay at 1,550 four-year colleges, by income. (NPR)

 

Sitting on the campus of a historically black college in July, Baltimore teen Scott Thompson II was in his comfort zone. In a stroke of luck and good timing, Scott’s mom, Myeisha Thompson, had been able to enroll the 13-year-old in the Maya-Baraka Writers Institute, a five-week intensive summer writing camp hosted by the college for the city’s youth. Infused with the spirit of the Institute’s namesakes—Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka, two socially and racially-conscious black storytellers—Scott set out to write a verse expressing his take on school systems and police departments that only see young, black males as problems. (The Atlantic)

 

The needle is slowly moving to address challenges facing New York City’s neediest students, but incremental progress means that the biggest problems remain daunting, a data-packed report on the city school system shows. (Chalkbeat New York)