Beth’s Briefings (11-3-15)

Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:

 

When Arielle Bourguignon started teaching at 24th Street Elementary in Jefferson Park about two years ago, she felt UCLA’s education school had prepared her well. (Los Angeles Times)

 

If you think the contest for the White House is the only election to watch right now, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi would like a word with you. Those three states are holding gubernatorial elections, as well as down-ballot contests, on Tuesday. I wrote about education policy issues in those states’ elections earlier this year. Arguably, the governor’s race with the biggest potential impact on public schools is in Kentucky, where Democrat and state Attorney General Jack Conway is facing off against Republican Matt Bevin, a business executive who unsuccessfully tried to unseat U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last year. (Education Week)

 

As one of the biggest, most successful tech companies, Google can hire pretty much anyone it wants. Accordingly, the company tends to favor Ph.D.s from Stanford and MIT. But, it has just partnered with a for-profit company called General Assembly to offer a series of short, noncredit courses for people who want to learn how to build applications for Android, Google’s mobile platform. Short, as in just 12 weeks from novice to employable. (NPR)

 

Federal education authorities, staking out their firmest position yet on an increasingly contentious issue, found Monday that an Illinois school district violated anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl and participates on a girls’ sports team to change and shower in the girls’ locker room without restrictions. (The New York Times)

 

Over the weekend I finally got around to reading the big New Yorker piece from last year on the dismal attempt to reform Newark schools led by Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg. That piece by Dale Russakoff reminded me of a great video that Nadine posted over the summer profiling three generations of one of Newark’s most notable families: Coyt Jones, who settled in the city from the Deep South during the Great Migration, his son Amiri Baraka, who became one of most influential writers and activists of ‘60s radicalism, and his son Ras Baraka, the current mayor of Newark. (The Atlantic)