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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
The Pell Grant program, which the federal government spent $34 billion on in 2014, has become a way to measure how well colleges serve the underprivileged. The more Pell Grant recipients a college enrolls, the story goes, the more they’re helping to increase college access. (Inside Higher Ed)
Bishar Hassan spends his days navigating the halls and classrooms of Talahi Elementary School, working to embrace and empower the dozens of Somali students who have arrived since the start of the year. (Education Week)
An artificially intelligent computer system built by Google has just beaten the world’s best human, Lee Sedol of South Korea, at an ancient strategy game called Go. Go originated in Asia about 2,500 years ago and is considered many, many times more complex than chess, which fell to AI back in 1997. (NPR)
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education released its list of members of the “negotiated rulemaking committee.” The committee will help write the rules for the Every Student Succeeds Act when it comes to assessment and supplement-not-supplant (the wonky provision of the law that governs how state and local dollars interact with federal funds). (Education Week)
Chicago Teachers Union leaders will ask its members to walk off their jobs April 1 for a one-day demonstration over contract talks and public education funding, Vice President Jesse Sharkey said Monday. (Chicago Tribune)
Strong principals are critical components of successful schools, and yet school leaders usually receive far less attention than teachers in the national conversation about education. The Wallace Foundation has been seeking to change that for years, investing millions of dollars in research into what makes a principal effective. (The Washington Post)