CTU delegates give go-ahead for April 1 walkout Tribune: The Chicago Teachers Union’s governing body approved a plan Wednesday to shut down the city’s schools with a one-day walkout April 1. Union leaders called the walkout to bring attention to its differences with the district in contract talks and to push. See also Catalyst: Teachers split over CTU vote on one-day strike.
Protests erupt at St. Paul Public Schools board meeting; teacher contract OK’d MinnPost: Things hit a tipping point when Jim Endres, a substitute teacher, moved the focus away from students, asking the board to better support teachers in the classroom, including Olson. He started to elaborate on what he considers to be the impossible standards placed on teachers today because we have “something called political correctness,” when booing audience members began to drown him out.
Pennsylvania Governor Relents After 9-Month Budget Impasse AP: Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor says he won’t block Republicans’ $6.6 billion no-new-taxes spending package after nearly nine months of budget gridlock.
Calif. Teachers, Administrators Disagree About How Well Common Core Is Going Teacher Beat: On common-core implementation, 70 percent of district leaders said their district had made good or excellent progress toward Common Core implementation. But teachers say there’s room for improvement.
How one Minnesota school district handles a rising immigrant population WNYC: The United States is now home to the largest number of foreign-born black people in its history—and many are K-12 students enrolled in public schools. The English-learners among them are overwhelmingly native Spanish, French, or Haitian Creole speakers, but districts have had to adjust on the fly to meet the needs of students who arrive communicating in less frequently spoken languages such as Amharic, Haitian Creole and Somali.
Why This Teacher Says More Classrooms Should Be Modeled After Gangs Huffington Post: Gangs give their members true responsibility, says Emdin, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. They make their members feel like they’re part of a family — a unit that will protect them. They give members a sense of “cosmopolitanism,” or make them feel they’re valued citizens of a larger community.
More Teachers Can’t Afford To Live Where They Teach NPR: Rising rents, housing prices and living costs in the top real estate markets from Boston to San Francisco are putting the squeeze on teachers.
