The Grade

At about 3 PM Eastern this afternoon, KCRW is scheduled to feature a segment on the LA School Report / The Seventy Four merger. Make sure to tune in or check it out after the fact — Madeline Brand’s “Press Play” is the name of the show.  Meanwhile, a slightly updated version of the LA […]

“I love seeing teachers outside of school. It’s like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs.” (Mean Girls 2004) With nearly 15,000 attendees expected, this week’s big Teach For America 25th Anniversary summit in Washington DC is going to generate a certain amount of media coverage and a shit-ton of social media activity.  Already, […]

PARCC Scores Lower for Students Who Took Exams on Computers EdWeek: Students who took the 2014-15 PARCC exams via computer tended to score lower than those who took the exams with paper and pencil—a revelation that prompts questions about the validity of the test results and poses potentially big problems for state and district leaders. Classroom Cuts […]

On Monday, it was announced that Campbell Brown’s The Seventy Four news outlet/advocacy effort and Jamie Lynton’s LA School Report (which I used to run) were merging. The two publishers praised the move, while critics and reporters noted concerns about the editorial slant of The Seventy Four and the possible impact on LA schools. But nobody […]

NEA, AFT Presidents: Hillary Clinton Can Make Things Happen PK12: Teachers’ union leaders who put muscle and money behind Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton say they’re not disheartened with her photo finish in the Iowa caucuses. Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager To Step Down NPR: The state-appointed emergency manager of the Detroit public schools system is calling it […]

NY Daily News education reporter Ben Chapman, and wife Brooke Vermillion, from NY Magazine. On Monday, an education-related story about Brooklyn gentrification won a national magazine award for best use of multimedia. An essay against traditional high school education was a finalist but didn’t win the top honor in its category. The November story, in […]

School spending per student drops for a third year in a row Hechinger Report: Per-pupil spending in the nation’s public schools fell for the third straight year in 2012-13*, according to the most recent federal financial data, which was released on January 27, 2016. In that school year, U.S. public schools spent only $10,763 per elementary, middle and […]

A Code of Ethics for Journalism Nonprofits https://t.co/avIcKNkB6h via @newyorker — Franck Nouchi (@FranckNouchi) January 30, 2016 In the New Yorker, former Columbia Journalism School dean Nick Lemann last week propose “A Code of Ethics for Journalism Nonprofits,” arguing that, “as more nonprofit news outlets emerge, it may be time for them to collectively consider a […]

Will teachers accept CPS offer or start countdown to strike? Chicago Sun-Times: Forty members of the Chicago Teachers Union are slated Monday to consider a “serious offer” for a new four-year contract, a step that’s making another teachers strike look less likely. See also Chicago Tribune, DNA Info. NYC Rejects Federal Findings That Many Elementary Schools Defy Disabilities […]

BEST OF THE WEEK EdWeek: States Are Closing the ‘Honesty Gap’ in Test Results, Study Says http://ow.ly/XFXko  Washington Post: Spending in nation’s schools falls again http://pllqt.it/mGn1sj USA Today: New analysis of math, reading scores ‘very disconcerting http://ow.ly/XHesk Politico New York: With Cuomo quiet, teachers’ union goes back on offense against charters http://ow.ly/Xy5Ts LA Times: The problem with […]