The U.S. Department of Education posted final regulations on the implementation of accountability, data reporting, and state plan provisions of the Every Sudent Succeeds Act.
Montana’s draft state plan for implementing the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) aims to support all students. This webinar (more…)
Part of an ongoing series exploring how the U.S. can educate the nearly 5 million students who are learning English.
Brains, brains, brains. One thing we’ve learned at NPR Ed is that people are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience findings.
But there is one happy nexus where research is meeting practice: bilingual education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for a lifetime,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and in a target language…
Read the full article here:
ACT Inc. has announced that it will begin offering accommodations for English-learners on the ACT, marking the first time that students with limited English proficiency will be able to request extra time and other supports on a national college-entrance exam.
Starting in fall 2017, students will be able to apply through their school counseling offices for several kinds of accommodations on the ACT. They can request as much as 50 percent more time than the three hours (or 3½ if students choose the essay) that are normally allowed for the exam. They can ask to use an approved bilingual glossary or to have test instructions read to them in their native language. They can also ask to take the test in a place that minimizes distractions, such as a separate room.
In the past, ACT has not offered accommodations based solely on a student’s English-learner status. The company decided to change course to eliminate any barriers that English proficiency might create when students take the exam.
The accommodations offer students “an opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned in school, leveling the playing field while not giving the students any special advantages,” ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe said in a prepared statement when the company announced the change Nov. 14…
Read the full article here. May require an Education Week subscription.
Since 2001, SETDA has served and supported educational technology leaders across the country from Alaska to Maine, Florida to Hawaii and as far away… read more
SETDA is excited to share the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology (OET) latest initiative, the Teacher Preparation Challenge. This program encourages teacher… read more
All students deserve a high-quality education and a learning environment that is safe and supportive. NSBA and school board members across the country are committed to ensuring this is the case in public schools in every town and community.
In light of the recent increase of bias incidents and violence in schools, NSBA joined with eight other leading education organizations in a call to action to affirm this important principle and to support the work school board members do every day to ensure that all children are safe and treated equally.
We come together as national education organizations in the wake of the troubling rash of reports of bias incidents and violence occurring in schools across the nation in recent days.
As learning communities, schools and school systems are responsible for providing all students with a physically and emotionally safe learning environment. This principle is the foundation of academic achievement, healthy individual development, and civic engagement. Violence, intimidation, and purposefully harmful expressions of bias undercut the core mission of schools and have no place in our school communities. We applaud the many schools and school districts that have already taken meaningful steps to develop and support positive school climate in their communities.
At a time when specific groups of students are being targeted, we must ensure that those students specifically know that their schools welcome them and that they will be safe. We urge all education stakeholders, including district leaders, heads of schools, principals, teachers, parents and guardians, and other educators to take action immediately within their school communities to support all students, especially those who face bias incidents in their schools. These actions should specifically affirm the right of all students, regardless of race, color, national origin, immigration status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or religion to be educated in an environment free from fear, violence, and intimidation.
We call upon our constituents and all education leaders to:
AASA: The School Superintendents Association
American School Counselor Association (ASCA)
GLSEN
National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP)
National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS)
National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)
National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP)
National School Boards Association (NSBA)
National PTA
– See more at: https://www.nsba.org/newsroom/nsba-joins-8-national-groups-call-action-make-our-schools-values-known#sthash.OvWTzZOU.dpuf
By Andrew Chiappazzi and Daveen Rae Kurutz, timesonline.com
On a Wednesday night in late May, Erie Superintendent Jay Badams stood in front of his school board and a packed auditorium of parents to make a startling proposal: Rather than make more cuts and eliminate sports, arts and music programs, the district should pass an unbalanced budget.
Badams said he’d rather shut down all four of the city’s high schools than continue with program cuts. Drastic matters call for drastic actions, he said. When Badams took the helm of the state’s 10th-largest district in 2010, he erased a $26-million shortfall by cutting 240 teaching positions.
Enough was enough.
“The only things left substantial that we have to cut are student programs,” Badams said. “And that’s something we’ve tried avoid like the plague for the past five years.”
Read the full story here.
(Originally published by Sunshine State News, November 21, 2016) — Jeb Bush’s education foundation will discuss the newly-implemented Every Student Succeeds Act at its 2016 National Summit on Education Reform in Washington, D.C. next month — and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will moderate a panel discussion on the ESSA.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will open the summit with a morning keynote address.
Panelists will include three former Secretaries of Education, including Arne Duncan, who served as Education Secretary under President Barack Obama.
The ESSA, which replaced the controversial No Child Left Behind Act, was passed late last year and governs over the country’s K-12 education policy. The ESSA held onto some of NCLB’s provisions like standardized testing, which require all students in schools to take standardized assessment tests under the same conditions.
Rice acknowledged the need to discuss the ESSA in detail since it is a newly-passed piece of legislation.
“It is a given that any legislation as sweeping as the Every Student Succeeds Act will take time for states to digest and translate into action on behalf of their students,” said Rice, who also serves a member of the ExcelinEd board of directors. “This distinguished panel of former education secretaries and advisors from three different administrations will offer valuable insight and guidance as policymakers seek to leverage the state-driven opportunities provided in this federal overhaul.”
Rice urged state and national lawmakers to pay attention to attend the panel and listen to the discussion.
Panel participants will take a closer look at the ESSA’s historical context, the major themes of the law and how state lawmakers can use the education package to keep their own states accountable.
Other participants in the panel will include former Secretaries of Education William Bennett (who served under President Ronald Reagan) and Rod Paige, who served as Education Secretary in George W. Bush’s administration.
Obama’s Deputy Assistant for Education Roberto Rodriguez will round out the panel as the fourth member.
“This year’s National Summit comes at a crucial time,” said Bennett. “The new ESSA law has transformed the education landscape and given states opportunities they didn’t have before. I’m honored to be a part of this panel discussion to chart how states can seize upon ESSA and make meaningful and lasting reforms.”
“Reforming our nation’s system for providing children a high quality elementary and secondary education is a national priority,” Paige explained.
While many have praised the ESSA, some groups have vehemently opposed its passage, criticizing its expansive scope and for still promoting a testing-based curriculum and for not truly promoting local control over education reforms.
The summit, the foundation’s ninth, will take place from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2. Over 900 education leaders from around the country attended the summit last year.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
The Washington Post — President-elect Donald Trump has said repeatedly that he doesn’t support a strong federal involvement in public education. It’s a district and state responsibility, he says, and that’s how it should be. But what will the upcoming Trump administration actually do to ensure that this vision is implemented?
In this post, Carol Burris, a former New York high school principal who is executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education, looks at the signs that Trump and his allies have been waving about his education reform priorities and paints a disturbing picture of where the education world may be headed.
Burris was named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, and the same organization named her the New York State High School Principal of the Year in 2013. She recently wrote a series on California charters, which you can find here, here and here.
By Carol Burris
Donald Trump had little to say about education during the campaign, but that does not mean that he and those who surround him do not have a plan. There are clear indications that President Obama’s Race to the Top will be replaced with something that could be called “Race to the Bank,” as the movement to privatize education seems certain to accelerate under an administration run by Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence.
Trump’s disdain for public schools is apparent. The Trump/Pence website uses the adjective “government” instead of “public” when referring to community schools. It claims that school choice is “the civil rights issue of our time.”
Donald Trump Jr. used the convention as an opportunity to denigrate public schools by comparing them to “Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers.” Trump Jr.’s rhetoric belongs to a long-standing, right-wing belief that public education is a socialist institution and that schools should be run by the private sector.
Let’s stop for a moment and think about the “government” that runs public schools. It is not, as the slogan implies, a Washington cabal. Except in those cases where mayors have grabbed control, public schools are governed by locally elected school boards. The origin of the school board dates to 1647, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony required every town to establish a public school. Committees of school governance sprang up, becoming autonomous, local governing boards as early as the 1820s.
Nearly all school board members serve without pay. Most are dedicated, locally elected community servants who must abide by strict laws regarding conflict of interest — laws from which many corporate charter boards are exempt. Yet school boards are viewed as an impediment by billionaires, like Reed Hastings of Netflix, who argued that school boards should be replaced with corporate boards through charter expansion…