Beth’s Briefings (3-10-15)

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

 

For decades, states across the South, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains enacted policies that prevented organized labor from forcing all workers to pay union dues or fees. But the industrial Midwest resisted. (NY Times)

 

President Barack Obama on Tuesday will announce sweeping borrower-friendly recommendations to fix the $1.1 trillion federal student loan system that, taken together, amount to an indictment of the U.S. Department of Education’s inability to protect borrowers from ever-increasing burdens. (Huffington Post)

 

In the gear-up toward 2016, all eyes are on the biggest, broadest education initiatives: a No Child Left Behind rewrite, the Common Core State Standards, standardized testing. Yet with those expansive measures came substantial indignation among those on the right, who abhor even the hint of a federal finger on education. Active parents who live in communities with public schools they deem unsatisfactory are increasingly seeking more options to give their children access to a better education. Those choices vary from charter schools to private school vouchers, among others. (Real Clear Education)

 

Citing confusion and frustration at the rollout of the new PARCC test — given for the first time in Illinois on Monday — Chicago legislators and some parents called for support for a bill that would clarify how schools would treat children whose parents don’t want them to take the test. (Chicago Sun-Times)

 

In an emerging sign of possible budget-battle lines, Democrats in the New York Assembly rejected proposals on Monday by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo linking an increase in statewide school aid to an array of his proposed changes. They also sided with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s bid for longer-term mayoral control of New York City’s schools. (NY Times)