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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
National
Education Inequality Starts Early
Upper-middle-class American professionals spend a lot on their children’s education and development. That fact – hardly news to anyone who has spent time with such parents – has gotten a lot of media attention lately, thanks to a new book by Brookings scholar Richard Reeves and a David Brooks column. Reeves’ contention – that affluent professionals’ investments in their kids serve to entrench a system of education-based privilege that makes it very hard for children from less advantaged backgrounds to advance up the socioeconomic ladder – has spurred heated debates on mainstream and social media. (U.S. News & World Report)
Rating the Ratings
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) grants states more authority over their school accountability systems than did No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—meaning that states now have a greater opportunity to design improved school ratings. Rating the Ratings: Analyzing the First 17 ESSA Accountability Plans examines whether states are making the most of the moment. (Fordham)
Bradford: For Black Families Focused on Education, the NAACP Just Committed ‘the Worst Kind of Betrayal’
Baltimore, also known as Charm City for those who grew up there, is my hometown. When I was a kid, Mayor Kurt Schmoke used his inaugural address to declare that education was one of his top priorities: “It would make me the proudest if one day it could simply be said that this is a city that reads.” (The 74)
Why the Myth of Meritocracy Hurts Kids of Color
Brighton Park is a predominantly Latino community on the southwest side of Chicago. It’s a neighborhood threatened by poverty, gang violence, ICE raids, and isolation—in a city where income, race, and zip code can determine access to jobs, schools, healthy food, and essential services. It is against this backdrop that the Chicago teacher Xian Franzinger Barrett arrived at the neighborhood’s elementary school in 2014. (The Atlantic)
States
Delaware
Don’t divide Delaware over charter schools: Delaware Voices
School’s out for summer, but for some Delaware leaders, that means more time to criticize public charter schools and scapegoat them for problems in Delaware’s education system. In his first week on the job, Delaware’s teachers’ union president Mike Matthews offered the following incendiary commentary on social media: “The whole charter movement and NSA [Neighborhood Schools Act] in Delaware is because certain folks don’t want their kids going to school with the kids of other certain folks. Period. (Delaware Online)
New York
NYC class size limits could boost learning — but in practice, they often don’t. A new study explains why.
contentious debate about how much class size actually matters is getting some new data — and ammunition for both sides. While former Mayor Michael Bloomberg dreamed of firing half the city’s teachers and paying the remaining superstars twice as much to teach larger classes, Mayor Bill de Blasio has argued that small classes are essential. But as classrooms have become more crowded, how much pressure should there be to reverse that trend? (Chalkbeat)
Pennsylvania
Philly schools ignore pervasive bullying of special ed students, federal complaint says
Advocates say the Philadelphia School District has downplayed or ignored pervasive bullying of special education students in classrooms throughout the city, and they want federal education officials to open an investigation and order changes. (The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News)