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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
Global
Chinese billionaire offers biggest education prize
The Yidan Prize will award nearly $8m (£6.64m) every year to two research projects that have the potential to “transform” global education. Charles Chen Yidan, who co-founded China’s internet company, Tencent, wants to use the prize to scale up innovative education research projects and replicate them across the world. (BBC)
National
What a Big Personalized-Learning Study Showed About 5 Ways to Rethink Teaching and Learning
With the passage of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, states have been given greater authority over how their students are educated — and more leeway in pursuing alternatives to traditional classroom instruction. One increasingly popular approach is personalized learning, a model that dramatically changes the roles of teacher and student, fueled by technology. (The 74)
Education Department Withdraws Controversial ESSA Spending Proposal
That big fight over spending rules for the Every Student Succeeds Act has ended not with a bang, but a whimper: U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. is throwing in the towel, withdrawing a proposed regulation for a section of the law known as “supplement-not-supplant” that had strong backing in the civil rights community, but angered state chiefs, advocates for districts, and Republicans in Congress. (Education Week)
The African American Roots of Betsy DeVos’s Education Platform
In recent weeks, pundits and scholars have bemoaned the privatization of public education that is likely to occur if Betsy DeVos is confirmed as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education. Democracy Now!, for instance, billed DeVos as “Public (School) Enemy No. 1.” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a statement described her as “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee put forward since President Carter created a Cabinet-level Department of Education.” At her confirmation hearing Tuesday evening, Democratic senators grilled her about her track record promoting private control of public education and demanded, to little avail, that she would commit to keeping public-school dollars in public schools. (The Atlantic)
State
Rhode Island
Rhode Island’s Big Bet on Classroom Innovation: A Statewide Personalized-Learning Initiative
The smallest state in the union leads one of the largest innovation efforts in the country by working to personalize education for every student. The Rhode Island Personalized Learning Initiative has put the power of Gov. Gina Raimondo’s Office of Innovation — a quasi-governmental agency dedicated to spurring, seeding and accelerating innovation through technology — at the service of education leaders statewide to define personalized learning and help them sift through research to implement meaningful models in their public schools. (The 74)
Tennessee
The ASD once said it could save these two Memphis schools. Why is its own operator now walking away?
After a charter operator abruptly announced plans to pull out of running two Memphis schools in Tennessee’s Achievement School District, leaders of the state-run turnaround initiative faced a wrenching decision. Should they run the schools directly, using their own management group, Achievement Schools? After all, Achievement Schools already is running five similar schools nearby, and the ASD was designed to improve schools in crisis. (Chalkbeat)