The Grade

L.A. teachers union wins dues increase, vows to battle foes of traditional public education LA Times: Members have responded by agreeing to raise their annual dues by about a third, to $1,000 a year. The increase was approved by 82% of those who cast ballots, according to United Teachers Los Angeles, which tallied the votes Wednesday. As […]

One of the Saturday night testimonials came from Julio Garcia’s (Rio Grande Valley ’13). In case you missed it, last week in DC roughly 15,000 current and former TFA alumni took over the Convention Center to celebrate 25 years since Wendy Kopp launched the group. Education leaders, journalists, and advocates were in attendance. For me, at least, […]

Power Struggle Over Future Of Public Schools Heats Up In Chicago NPR: The politics surrounding the future of Chicago’s public school system are intensifying. Three different players are in a power struggle for control of the system, which is suffering financially. Education Magazine Takes Readers Inside Chicago’s Biggest Charter Network WBEZ Chicago: Catalyst associate editors Melissa Sanchez and Kalyn […]

  On KCREW’s mid-day show, Press Play, Madeleine Brand interviews the LA Times’ Howard Blume about the takeover of the LA School Report by The Seventy Four.  As you’ll hear, Blume credits LA School Report for balanced coverage in the past, but raises questions about the funding and editorial focus of The Seventy Four. He […]

More schools nationwide are experimenting with diversity programs, report says ChalkbeatNY: Ninety-one districts and charter networks now have at least one school that factors socioeconomic status into its assignments, according to a report released Tuesday by the Century Foundation. The number identified by the foundation has more than doubled since 2007 and represents about 4 million students […]

​Screengrab of a recent Slate blog post about standardized testing. I’m generally a big fan of Slate and am happy that they’ve been running more education stories and blog posts in the past few months through its Schooled page.  But I wish that their explanation of where the writing comes from — and who’s paying for […]

Let’s start the week with another example of great writing about education (among other things). The latest example isn’t traditional journalistic reporting but rather a long personal essay, “Everything is Yours, Everything is Not Yours,” by Clemantine Wamariya (pictured above) and Elizabeth Weil, which was a finalist for National Magazine Awards prize: The piece, which lost out […]

As immigration resurges, U.S. public schools help children find their footing Washington Post: Between Oct. 1, 2013 and Dec. 31, 2015, federal officials released more than 95,000 unaccompanied minors into U.S. communities, virtually all of them entitled to enroll in public school. Acting Ed. Secretary: Educators ‘unfairly blamed’ for schools’ challenges USA Today: In his first major speech, the […]

Kudos to education reporter Yasmeen Khan and the education team at WNYC (NYC public radio) for Demand for School Integration Leads to Massive 1964 Boycott — In New York City, which finds a refreshing new way to tell a very old but very important story and helps remind us that widely-accepted ideas like “neighborhood school” […]

PARCC Scores Lower for Students Who Took Exams on Computers EdWeek: Hard numbers from across the consortium are not yet available. But the advantage for paper-and-pencil test-takers appears in some cases to be substantial, based on independent analyses conducted by one prominent PARCC state and a high-profile school district that administered the exams. See also Washington Post: Report: […]