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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
For many, the New Year represents new beginnings, a chance to start fresh with a clean slate. But this was not the case for hundreds of undocumented adults and children swept up in deportation raids in the first days of 2016. Federal authorities, stepping up immigration enforcement, fanned out primarily into Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas to take unauthorized immigrants with deportation orders into custody. Immigration officers are focusing their efforts on some 100,000 families that flowed across the U.S. border in 2014, reportedly in an attempt to escape violence in their home countries like El Salvador, the current murder capital of the world. (The Atlantic)
The debate over K-12 education spending in the Iowa Legislature has begun to take shape with a set of procedural votes. The Republican-controlled House voted Monday for legislation that would set a new growth rate for basic aid to schools in the fiscal year that begins in July. The bill now heads to the Democratic-majority Senate, where lawmakers have indicated the proposed increase is not adequate to properly support school districts. (Education Week)
Sarah Ha didn’t have any Asian-American teachers growing up. Ha was born in the United States but moved to South Korea when she was six years old; she and her little sister were left there for two years while their parents established a life in the United States. Enveloped by Korean culture, Ha all but forgot the English she had grown up learning. (Education Week)
For kids up and down the East Coast, the snow that piled up over the weekend translates into a day or two without school. But in other parts of the country, snow days are taking on a new meaning. Students in Delphi, Ind., are expected to log onto their classes from home when schools are closed for snow. (NPR)
Students are getting the message that a college education is a necessary prerequisite for a middle class life. Today, more than 85 percent of high school graduates eventually make their way to college. But much of the increase in college-going isn’t at traditional four-year universities with grassy quads and intellectually stimulating seminars. Instead, the nation’s community colleges are absorbing the largest chunk of the new students. (US News)
The U.N. children’s agency is launching a $2.8 billion appeal to help children caught up in humanitarian emergencies this year. UNICEF Geneva’s director of emergency programs, Sikander Khan, says about a quarter of that appeal will target education, which the agency considers a “life-saving measure for children” when war has shuttered many schools. (Associated Press)