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Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
Michelle Rhee had big ambitions when she went on Oprah four years ago to launch her new advocacy group, StudentsFirst, with a promise to raise $1 billion to transform education policy nationwide. (Politico)
Teaching dwarfs every other profession that requires a college degree. Nationwide, 3.7 million schoolteachers serve grades K–12—more than all the doctors, lawyers, and engineers in the country combined. Teacher shortages, once chronic, abated during the recession, when layoffs were widespread, but will soon return with a vengeance. Fully half of all teachers are Baby Boomers on the brink of retirement. Among novice teachers, who constitute an increasingly large proportion of the remaining workforce, between 40 and 50 percent typically quit within just five years, citing job dissatisfaction or more-alluring prospects. Given this drain at both ends of the teaching pipeline, schools will likely need to hire more than 3 million new teachers by 2020. That is an enormous talent hole to fill. (The Atlantic)
[Valerie Strauss has] recently published several posts about a new effort led by former CNN journalist Campbell Brown to eliminate or restrict teacher and other job protections for teachers. (You can see them here, here, here and here.) Brown has appeared on numerous television shows recently arguing that legal job protections for teachers have a negative impact on student achievement; critics say there is no research showing a connection between teacher tenure laws and lower rates of student achievement. In the following post, Brown responds to the posts I have published as well as other criticism of her activism. (Washington Post)
When Alberto Cortes was held back in fourth grade because of low math skills, he thought his world had come to an end. (Hechinger Report)
New York
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has filed a motion seeking to consolidate two recent lawsuits claiming that the state’s tenure and seniority laws violate students’ rights to a sound, basic education. (Wall Street Journal)