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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
Former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee has told people close to her that she is preparing to step down as CEO of StudentsFirst, the advocacy organization she created after leaving her chancellor post, according to three sources close to the organization. (Huffington Post)
On one side of South Lauderdale Ave. sits the Foote Homes, among the last of the old federal housing projects that once proliferated in South Memphis, a low-slung, dun-bricked complex marked by stuffed animal memorials to dead teenagers, a place where two grown women recently pummeled each other silly while neighbors stood by laughing, smartphone cameras rolling for YouTube posterity. (Politico)
The number of non-teaching staff in the United States (those employed by school systems but not serving as classroom teachers) has grown by 130 percent since 1970. Non-teachers—more than three million strong—now comprise half of the public school workforce. Their salaries and benefits absorb one-quarter of current education expenditures. (Fordham Institute)
Eric Taylor of Stanford explains the findings of a study he co-authored with John Tyler, “Can Teacher Evaluation Improve Teaching?: Evidence of systematic growth in the effectiveness of midcareer teachers,” which appears in the Fall 2012 issue of Ed Next. (Education Next)
North Carolina
North Carolina teachers are finally getting a raise, but not necessarily under the terms they wanted. (Education Week)