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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News & analysis:
Chicago to shutter 50 schools, largest mass closing in major U.S. city
Chicago’s board of education voted Wednesday to shutter 50 schools, the largest number of schools closed at one time by any major U.S. city. (Washington Post)
A testimony on the Common Core standards
The following is the text of Kathleen Porter-Magee’s testimony to the Wisconsin State Legislature’sCommittee on Education, delivered on May 22, 2013. (Education Gadfly – Common Core Watch)
Is District Participation in Race to the Top Waning?
With last week’s decision by the Christina school district in Delaware to stop fighting for the rest of its Race to the Top funding, a key urban district has dropped out of the state’s education reform plans. (Education Week – Politics K-12)
New York:
Dennis Walcott Speech Pans Democratic Mayoral Candidates Over Proposed Education Reforms
New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott criticized democratic mayoral candidates Saturday, telling a crowd of educators and school administrators that their proposed policies would be catastrophic for students, The New York Times reports. (Huffington Post)
Anthony Weiner: The kind of mayoral race I’m going to run
When I ran for mayor in 2005, I argued that Democrats didn’t deserve to win City Hall unless we showed we were the party of new ideas on how to help the middle class and those struggling to make it there. (New York Daily News)
View Point:
Morgan S. Polikoff and Matthew Di Carlo: The serious risks of rushing new teacher evaluation systems
One of the primary policy levers now being employed in states and districts nationwide is teacher evaluation reform. Well-designed evaluations, which should include measures that capture both teacher practice and student learning, have great potential to inform and improve the performance of teachers and, thus, students. Furthermore, most everyone agrees that the previous systems were largely pro forma, failed to provide useful feedback, and needed replacement. (Washington Post)