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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his staff began to preview what their promised “50-state strategy” on teacher equity might look like during a wide-ranging interview with reporters on Thursday. (Education Week)
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) used an executive order to strip the name “Common Core” from the state’s new math and reading standards for public schools. In the Hawkeye State, the same standards are now called “The Iowa Core.” And in Florida, lawmakers want to delete “Common Core” from official documents and replace it with the cheerier-sounding “Next Generation Sunshine State Standards.” (Washington Post)
Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 on expanding early childhood education with an infusion of new funding, a vision he championed over the past year with a plan for universal preschool. But throughout his administration, the country has been grappling with economic turmoil. (Washington Post)
Maryland
Report: Va., Md., D.C. have some of the nation’s highest gaps by income level in reading proficiency
Fourth-grade students in Virginia, Maryland and the District have among the largest gaps in reading proficiency in the country when broken down by income level, according to a report released Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. (Washington Post)
Thanks to a possible additional $46.8 million from the state, Prince George’s County Public Schools is expecting to have more money to expand full-time pre-kindergarten, improve wages and hire more teachers. (The Gazette)
Pennsylvania
My family and I moved out of Philadelphia last year. We did so reluctantly, and with a crippling heaping of guilt. It wasn’t the crime, or the taxes, or the grit. No, we left for the same reason that untold thousands have decamped for the suburbs before us: the crummy state of the city’s public schools, a chronic and seemingly immutable fact of life in Philadelphia. (Philadelphia)