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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
On Thanksgiving Day in 1960, one of the earliest investigative documentaries in U.S. television was aired on a program on CBS called CBS Reports: Harvest of Shame, presented by the cigarette-smoking Edward R. Murrow and sponsored by Philip Morris. The hour-long program revealed the conditions of migrant workers who follow the harvest around the U.S., focusing on the lives and work of the laborers and their families and the effect of interrupted education on the children who trail them. (The Atlantic)
Bernie Sanders may be out as a presidential contender, but his proposal to make public college free has worked its way into Hillary Clinton’s education plan. While the plan is making some private colleges nervous, his campaign has succeeded in furthering a broader conversation among university admissions directors about how to make access to higher education more equitable. (The Atlantic)
Call them the top four percent: elite private colleges and universities that together sit atop three-quarters of the higher education terrain’s endowment wealth. (The Hechinger Report)
New York Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia wrote a critical letter to the U.S. Department of Education this week saying that punishing schools for having a high opt-out rate on the state’s federally required standardized tests would defeat the purpose of states’ accountability systems. (Education Week)
The New Jersey Board of Education voted on Wednesday to require high school students to pass tests aligned with contentious standards, even as other states have moved away from these assessments. (The New York Times)