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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
Despite the thousands of dollars spent on glossy PR, both pro and con, over the Vergara v. California case, last week’s decision by a state appeals court to uphold teacher job protections hinged on a far less flashy factor: the arcana of California constitutional law. (Education Week)
Leaders of dozens of the nation’s top businesses — from Apple and Facebook to Target, Walmart and AT&T — are calling on Congress to help provide computer science education in all K-12 schools, arguing that the United States needs far more students who are literate in the technologies that are transforming nearly every industry. (The Washington Post)
The nation’s colleges continue to graduate far fewer students who grew up in poor households. With the country’s economic potential possibly hanging in the balance, a new report urges the United States to dedicate more resources and know-how to closing the college-completion gap between wealthier students and those from low-income backgrounds. (The Atlantic)
In Washington, polarization has become the norm. That now extends to federal education policy, once a sleepy backwater of genial bipartisanship. Yet, even as education policy is increasingly divided along party lines, education research is one place where both left and right can agree on what’s needed. Given that state of affairs, it’s striking that Congress is having so much trouble enacting the nation’s key education research bill — which is nearly a decade past due for reauthorization. In December, the Senate passed the Strengthening Education Through Research Act (SETRA), but the legislation has stalled in the House (though the House passed a nearly identical bill the year before). (The Hill)
Can a corporation do right by its workers and boost its bottom line? A welter of companies have in the past few years made big media splashes about their programs to underwrite the college educations of their workers. While Starbucks, JetBlue, and Fiat-Chrysler are some of the largest to announce their postsecondary plans for employees, the benefit exists at roughly 60 percent of all U.S. companies. (The Atlantic)
The way Daphne Patton remembers it, it was more money than she’d ever seen.
It was 1990, and the Kentucky Supreme Court had declared the state’s school funding system unconstitutional. Within a year, a lot more money started flowing to the poorest school districts, a 50 to 60 percent increase in their budgets. (NPR)
It was 1993 when Massachusetts Gov. William Weld declared: “A good education in a safe environment is the magic wand that brings opportunity.” The Republican was signing into law a landmark overhaul of the state’s school funding system. “It’s up to us to make sure that wand is waved over every cradle,” he added. (NPR)