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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
With the recent news about the rejection of a parent-trigger petition in Los Angeles, I was curious about what other states are considering new laws to give parents a route to greater power over their children’s schools. (Education Week)
It landed like a bombshell last summer, a leaked plan to double the number of charter schools in Los Angeles Unified and students attending them over the next eight years. It talked of raising half a billion dollars from foundations and high-wealth donors to get it done, all with the idea of improving the quality of education for low-income students. (EdSource)
John B. King Jr. is like no previous U.S. secretary of Education: He’s half-black and half-Puerto Rican, and in his (successful) admissions essay to Harvard, he had to explain why he got kicked out of Phillips Academy Andover, the prestigious Massachusetts high school. (Los Angeles Times)
A wealthy Virginia county is weighing a plan that would concentrate children from a poor, largely Hispanic neighborhood into two schools, rolling back a policy of economic integration and stoking arguments reminiscent of the “separate but equal” debate a generation ago. (The Washington Post)
The U.S. Supreme Court next week takes up a case that has pitted Roman Catholic elementary and secondary schools, religious colleges, orders of nuns, and other groups in a bitter battle with President Barack Obama’s administration. (Education Week)
Note to Republican presidential candidates: Congress passed, with broad bipartisan support, an education law that specifically says the federal government cannot push academic standards such as Common Core or give incentives to states that adopt them. On top of that, Common Core standards were established by state governors, not Washington. (Associated Press)