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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis:
Class Time Increases In 5 States In Effort To Improve U.S. Public Education
Open your notebooks and sharpen your pencils. School for thousands of public school students is about to get quite a bit longer. Five states were to announce Monday that they will add at least 300 hours of learning time to the calendar in some schools starting in 2013. Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee will take part in the initiative, which is intended to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive on a global level. (Huffington Post)
Study: More Churn at the Top in Large Districts
Running one of the nation’s largest school districts typically comes with prestige and pay that draw would-be educational superstars, but also pressure and political complexity that cause them to burn out far faster than leaders of the majority of districts. (Education Week)
Chicago Teachers Union Report Slams Charters Schools, Accuses CPS Of ‘Educational Apartheid’
Nearly two months after a contentious labor battle between Chicago teachers and the city, the Chicago Teachers Union is striking yet another blow in a report that calls the city’s school system one of “educational apartheid. (Huffington Post)
Details Hazy on L.A. Teacher-Evaluation Pact
The Los Angeles school district and the city’s teachers’ union have reached a tentative agreement about the conditions of a new teacher evaluation system, putting an end to months of court-ordered bargaining. Even so, the issue seems far from resolved, as the resulting procedures are—to say the least—vague. (Education Week – Teaching Now)
View Point:
Ronald Wolk: Common Core vs. Common Sense
The headline in a recent edition of Education Week read, “Hopes Pinned on Standards to Boost College Readiness: SAT results show no improvement in any tested subject.” We’ve been pinning our hopes on standards for more than two decades with little to show for it. About half of our high school graduates are no better prepared for college or work than they were 20 years ago, when standards and testing became the nation’s school improvement strategy. (Education Week)