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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
National
California shooting: Schoolteachers ‘saved’ children from gunman
Staff at Rancho Tehama Reserve School went into lockdown, securing school doors after hearing nearby gunshots. Authorities praised the teachers’ actions as “monumental” in saving “countless” lives. Police confirmed one child was shot at the school after the gunman fired into it. Others were hurt by broken glass. Police later confronted the gunman in a stolen vehicle, shooting and killing him. He was named locally as 43-year-old Kevin Neal. It is believed the shooting spree began after a domestic row with the gunman’s neighbors in Rancho Tehama, a rural community about 120 miles (195km) from Sacramento, on Tuesday morning. (BBC)
30 Under 30 Education 2018: Young Leaders Who Are Expanding Access And Opportunity
What do the 30 Under 30 Education 2018 honorees all have in common? They’re not simply shaping education, they’ve torn a page of the entrepreneurial playbook and are creating new businesses, nonprofits and organizations. Their bottom line: open up new markets and access to lifelong, quality educational experiences. (Forbes)
Will Schools Start Lying About Attendance Rates?
Schools across the country are about to be held accountable for student attendance—attaching stakes to a measure that previously had much less significance and increasing the risk that schools will try to manipulate that data. But it’s unclear how effectively states have prepared for that possibility, or have systems in place to accurately monitor absenteeism data at all. (The Atlantic)
Report: How Are American Cities Delivering on the Promise of Public School Choice?
In America today, families in almost every urban community have some kind of public school choice. This report focuses on “public school choice,” under which families are able to choose from both an array of traditional public schools and public charter schools. Public school choice has grown rapidly in the past 20 years; new charter schools have emerged with support from state and federal policy and philanthropists, while district school choice has grown alongside or in competition with charter schools. Choice, in one form or another, is now woven deeply into today’s urban education landscape. (CRPE)
States
Virginia
How Virginia’s First Lady Is Leading the Fight Against Child Hunger
Dorothy McAuliffe has spent most of her time as the first lady of Virginia trying to make sure low-income children are fed before and during the school day. “We cannot have 13 million hungry children in the United States of America,” she says. “It doesn’t need to be that way. We have enough food to feed ourselves and the world.” In 2014, her husband, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, put her in charge of working with state agencies, the legislature, nonprofits and businesses to tackle child hunger. It’s clear to anti-hunger advocates that he made the right decision: The number of public schools in Virginia now offering universal free breakfast and lunch has increased 297 percent in three years. (Governing)
Maryland
Schools and cellphones: In elementary schools? At lunch?
It’s been a long time since mobile phones arrived in the nation’s schools, but educators are still grappling with what to do about them. Should they be allowed in elementary schools? What about middle-schoolers using them at lunch? Which limits make the most sense for devices so ubiquitous? What has become a more settled matter for high school students is sparking questions and controversy in lower grades, some two decades after mobile phones became an inescapable part of the cultural landscape. (The Washington Post)
New York
Parental involvement improving at NYC schools after years of struggles, stats show
More city parents are getting involved in their children’s education, new statistics show. Family engagement is widely regarded as a key to successful schools, but the city has struggled with it for years, despite spending millions of dollars to promote it. Now schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña says data indicate more parents took part in their children’s schooling, for the school year that ended in June. She credits a number of new investments and an overhaul of the city’s family outreach efforts. (NY Daily News)