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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
A new initiative led by three organizations aims to strengthen support for the Common Core State Standards by emphasizing their importance to students and the skills they’ll need, while also trying to dispel myths about the standards. (Education Week)
There are no seventh-graders in the Lindsay Unified School District. Instead, in the “Content Level 7” room at Washington Elementary, 10 students, ages 11 to 14, gather around teacher Nelly Lopez for help in writing essays. Eight sit at computers, plowing through a lesson on sentence structure, while a dozen advanced students work on assignments in pairs. (Wall Street Journal)
This is a pivotal moment for the Common Core State Standards. Although 45 states quickly adopted the higher standards created by governors and state education officials, the effort has begun to lose momentum. Some are now wavering in the face of misinformation campaigns from people who misrepresent the initiative as a federal program and from those who support the status quo. Legislation has been introduced in at least 12 states to prohibit implementation and states have dropped out of the two major Common Core assessment consortia. Opposition voices are growing louder as new assessments show students aren’t performing as well as they had on easier state tests offered previously. (Bloomberg View)
Teach for America, which places thousands of freshly minted college graduates in teaching jobs in some of the toughest schools in the country, is rethinking its training program in light of complaints from its own members that they need more preparation for the classroom. (Washington Post)
New Jersey
More than three years after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg committed $100 million toward remaking Newark’s struggling schools, the district is engulfed in a dispute over proposed large-scale teacher layoffs that’s threatening to derail wider reform efforts. (Washington Post)