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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News & analysis:
Top Jobs Opening Up in Nation’s School Districts
Districts across the country, including some of the nation’s largest, are facing a spate of superintendent vacancies. Schools chiefs or interim superintendents will be leaving this year or next in at least 17 well-known districts, including Baltimore; Boston; Clark County, Nev.; Indianapolis; and Wake County, N.C. (Education Week)
Common-Core Pushback to the Pushback: Who Has the Political Mojo?
The political battle over the Common Core State Standards is heating up, both at the state level and in broader debates at the national level, and at least some supporters of the standards appear to be taking notice that the ride may get very bumpy, at least politically. One supporter who summed up such fears was Andrew Rotherham, the co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners, a K-12 consulting firm. He said that common-core advocates who issued simple dismissals of concerns or criticisms about the standards’ path ahead were exhibiting a disconcerting “view from the Green Zone.” This is a reference to the international zone in Baghdad that was the heart of the American presence in Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003, and it’s not a flattering one. (Education Week – State Ed Watch)
Head Start Centers Feeling ‘Sequester’ Pain
When the automatic federal budget cuts known as sequestration went into effect in March, Margaret Molloy and her staff at a Head Start agency in the Tucson, Ariz., area started looking for places to make cuts. (Education Week)
Buena Vista School District Officially Closes For Year, Offers ‘Skills Camp’
It’s official. For the 400 or so students in Buena Vista, Mich., school is over, even though the academic year isn’t supposed to end until the middle of June. (Huffington Post)
Amid Common Core Fights, Remember Race to Top Promises
College- and career-ready standards are intertwined in the U.S. Department of Education’s most prized initiatives—No Child Left Behind Act waivers and Race to the Top. (Education Week – Politics K-12)
View Point:
Rick Hess: Why the ‘Schools v. Poverty’ Debate Feels Aimless: A Twitter Play (in Three Acts)
I finally joined Twitter the other day. (I’m at “rickhess99,” if you care.) I haven’t yet actually penned any tweets, and don’t know that I will. But I thought I’d practice my tweeting a bit (just in case), by taking a crack at boiling down last week’s familiar back-and-forth debate over “is it schools, or is it poverty?” Fordham’s Mike Petrilli kicked things off last Tuesday with a letter to Debbie Meier over at “Bridging Differences.” That yielded a flurry of back-and-forths in a “reply all” public email exchange. Unsure how much of this was posted anywhere, I thought I’d try to distill it for you, twitter-style, since I thought it fairly illuminating. (Education Week – Rick Hess Straight Up)