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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis:
Sandy Hook Students, Teachers Head Back To School After Shooting
Since escaping a gunman’s rampage at their elementary school, the 8-year-old Connors triplets have suffered nightmares, jumped at noises and clung to their parents a little more than usual. Now parents like David Connors are bracing to send their children back to school, nearly three weeks after the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. It won’t be easy – for the parents or the children, who heard the gunshots that killed 20 of their classmates and six educators. (Huffington Post)
Discarded integration method sees new life
Few education experts have been as true to a seemingly unworkable idea as Richard D. Kahlenberg, author and senior fellow at the Century Foundation. Since the 1990s, he has been the nation’s leading exponent of socioeconomic integration. That means he wants as many low-income students as possible to attend schools with a majority of middle-class children. (Washington Post – Class Struggle)
Deferring Six Figures on Wall Street for Teacher’s Salary
Four years after the financial crisis, Wall Street hiring has remained weak, and many college graduates have searched for jobs and even careers in other fields. In the last several years, hundreds of such would-be finance professionals and management consultants have taken their high-powered ambitions and spreadsheet modeling skills to the classroom. (New York Times – DealBook)
The Year Ahead for School Choice and Its K-12 Impact
As we welcome 2013, the prospects for parents’ ability to invoke school choice are poised to further alter the landscape of K-12 education. Education Week reporter Sean Cavanagh wrote a comprehensive review of the top 2012 developments in Choiceland for the Charters & Choice blog, then offered a series of predictions about which issues are likely to shape the future of choice. (Education Week – K-12 Parents and the Public)
New York:
Commission Recommends Core Changes in Education
Forcing teachers to pass a kind of bar exam, like the ones aspiring lawyers and doctors must sit for. Extending the number of hours and days students must spend in school, to break with academic calendars formed in an agrarian age. Consolidating school districts; making schools a hub for health care and social services; and giving 4-year-olds in the state’s poorest areas access to full-day prekindergarten. (New York Times)
Cuomo Warns Teacher Evaluation Deadline is Real
Neither the teachers union nor the Bloomberg administration should count on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to go easy on them while the two sides negotiate a teacher evaluation deal. He gave a definitive “nope” when asked Wednesday if he would consider extending the Jan. 17 deadline, thereby preventing the city from losing about $250 million in state aid while it hammers out an agreement. (SchoolBook)
View Points:
Jeanne Allen: Out With the Old, In With the New: Education Reform Cannot Be Compromised
Among many traditions as we close one year and begin a new one are lists of what is “in” and “out.” At the end of 2012, compromise was definitely “in.” And no wonder. Staring over the precipice of a fiscal cliff, the American people couldn’t understand why politicians can’t seem to agree on things. Compromise, it is thought, is an unadulterated good. (Huffington Post)