Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
Career Education, a Schaumburg-based higher education company, said Wednesday that it will close or sell all of its schools except its two largest, amid a government crackdown on for-profit colleges that leave students with useless degrees and a lot of debt. (Chicago Tribune)
The Los Angeles Unified School District is not contractually obligated to hire a single teacher to help ease crowded classrooms under the terms of its tentative agreement with United Teachers Los Angeles, this news organization has discovered. (LA Daily News)
Beyond Sin City’s casino strip, what happens in Vegas also includes an education system in crisis. Its schools are severely overcrowded, as we reported Wednesday on Morning Edition. And Nevada and Vegas’ schools are ranked at or near the bottom nationally. (NPR)
The Chicago Teachers Union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint accusing the city’s school board of bad-faith bargaining and refusing to engage in mediation toward a new contract. (Chicago Tribune)
One of the hottest new startups in the Bay Area is a school. The AltSchool was founded by a former Google engineer and he’s raised $100 million to build these for-profit microschools. (NPR)
Corinthian Colleges, the for-profit education company familiar to corporate law professors for its appearance in textbooks about securities regulation, now has a chance to appear in bankruptcy and restructuring texts as well. (NY Times)
Maryland
U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and Education Secretary Arne Duncan spent Wednesday afternoon at Frederick Douglass High School, where they discussed financial literacy and heard students’ concerns about the lack of jobs and opportunities in Baltimore. (The Baltimore Sun)