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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
Maybe the campus protests seemed rather isolated at first. Dissatisfaction with the administration. Outrage over bad decisions. A student altercation gone bad. (The Atlantic)
Fifty years ago, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), and declared “it to be the policy of the United States to provide financial assistance to school districts serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families.” (The Hill)
U.S. public schools beefed up security measures with safety drills and parent notification systems in the years surrounding the massacre at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, according to a government survey released Thursday. (Associated Press)
The opening weeks of the legislative session saw ambitious plans for education reform — expanding pre-kindergarten, overhauling teacher evaluations, creating a private school voucher program and updating the state’s accountability system, to name just a few. (The Texas Tribune)
Supporters of charter schools won a groundbreaking election victory in Los Angeles this week, putting one of their leaders, for the first time, on the governing board of the nation’s second-largest school system. (LA Times)
Pam Stewart, who has survived an often-contentious period as Florida’s education commissioner, received a solid performance review Wednesday from her bosses on the State Board of Education. (Tampa Bay Times)
Virginia students taking the annual Standards of Learning exams were unable to log in to the tests for more than an hour Wednesday afternoon, the third time in a week that computer problems have disrupted the statewide standardized testing. (Washington Post)
Maryland
Less than half of Maryland’s kindergartners are ready to tackle the Common Core curriculum that’s being rolled out in schools, state officials reported Tuesday. (Capital Gazette)
Pennsylvania
The conventional wisdom made sense: When one high profile African-American (Tony Williams) runs against two well-known white candidates (Jim Kenney and Lynne Abraham), the African American candidate wins. How could it not be? (The Philadelphia Citizen)