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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
Republicans trekked to New Hampshire in search of the mantle as top conservative education reformer Wednesday and were promptly met there by Common Core — the flash point that has become shorthand for too much testing and has split the party and riled conservatives. (CNN)
Former CNN host Campbell Brown wants to make education a key issue of the 2016 presidential election. (Los Angles Times)
Ohio Gov. John Kasich admonished his fellow Republicans on Wednesday for calling for the elimination of the Department of Education, which is an odd stance to take for someone who called for eliminating the Department of Education. (Huffington Post)
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and other 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls on Wednesday endorsed school vouchers as a means of driving competition and innovation in the nation’s school systems. (CBS News)
A new program helping parents pay for their child’s private school education is off to a fast start. In less than three weeks, the state has received almost half the number of applicants it anticipated for the entire year. The Education Savings Account program allows parents to remove a student from public school and access a portion of that child’s education funding to pay for private school. (Las Vegas Now)
Amid an ongoing political storm over Common Core educational standards for public schools, a state committee began Wednesday to review Louisiana’s educational benchmarks — but some feared the deadline is too short and the panel would end up rebranding the controversial standards that started the debate. (Education Week)
The defendants may be one southern California school district and its top officials, but an unprecedented, class action lawsuit could have a big impact on schools across the country. (NPR)
Solano County is the 92nd most educated area in the United States, out of 150 measured — a somewhat lackluster showing, according to a new WalletHub study. This area is, however, leading the pack in closing the education gap between blacks and whites and between the genders, the study shows. (Times-Herald News)