posted on
Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. isn’t backing down on the department’s stance on how a wonky spending provision—supplement-not-supplant—should play out under the brand new Every Student Succeeds Act, despite a heated debate Monday with GOP lawmakers, including Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., an architect of ESSA and the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. (Education Week)
Bloodletting to keep the “humors” in balance was a leading medical treatment from ancient Greece to the late 19th century. That’s hard to believe now in the age of robot-assisted surgery, but “doctors” trusted lancets and leeches for centuries. To Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the college lecture is the educational equivalent of bloodletting, one long overdue for revision. (NPR)
Three school districts have created innovative systems to evaluate teachers that could serve as models for districts laboring under a flawed state evaluation law, according to a new study. (EdSource)
Maryland
Maryland legislators voted Monday for the state to administer a controversial assessment of kindergartners only to a sampling of students, rather than the entire state’s kindergarten population. (Education Week)
Minnesota
Minnesota laws protect teachers who should no longer be in classrooms, thus preventing thousands of students from getting a high-quality education, claims a lawsuit to be filed Thursday by national and local education reform groups. (Star Tribune)