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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
After eight days of negotiations and countless proposals, a panel of educators, advocates, and officials from the U.S. Department of Education came to agreement Tuesday on assessment regulations under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Those rules are now on their way to becoming official, after they’ve been published in the Federal Register. (Education Week)
The College Board has lashed out at its rival, ACT Inc., saying its plan to add live teaching to its online test-prep service is more about money than public service, and accusing ACT of trying to “replace” classroom teachers with long-distance instruction. (Education Week)
The U.S. Education Secretary John King is frustrated by what he describes as the “ahistorical nature” of conversations today about how to integrate schools. Speaking at a Century Foundation panel on Tuesday to highlight two recent reports by the left-leaning think tank, King said that the need for “urgency” when it comes to making classrooms more socioeconomically and racially diverse is sometimes thwarted by communities who see the current lack of real integration as a fact over which they have no control. That, he argued, is simply not true. (The Atlantic)
New Jersey
The New Jersey state test opted out. On Wednesday, a technical glitch meant that thousands of students trying to take the annual online exam known as PARCC couldn’t log in. (The Wall Street Journal)
New York
Amazon.com Inc. won a deal worth about $30 million to provide e-books to New York City, the nation’s largest school district. (The Wall Street Journal)