Three-quarters of the students enrolled in Friendship schools in D.C. are from Wards 7 and 8, the city’s two poorest areas, and nearly all are African-American. Their achievement is reflected in their continuous improvement on standardized tests. Most recently, Donald Hense and his team celebrated, when five of Friendship’s 12 D.C. schools were rated Tier 1 by the Public Charter School Board – the highest of three ratings a charter school can earn.

DEFENDER NEWS NETWORK — “We’re unique men who feel the need to help others. Our constant goal is to make sure mankind is doing better,” said Jeffery Williams, who serves as the Life Membership Board Regional Director for the Ninth District (Omega chapters in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas).

This document reflects work that began prior to the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act. In 2015 the Arkansas team began engaging with stakeholders to determine how our agency could better support students, educators, school and district leaders, and communities in their efforts to improve student outcomes.

EDUCATION WEEK — This week, Education Week is bringing its trademark analysis to the remaining state plans for fulfilling requirements of the Every Student Succeeds law. On Monday, we had a look at the states’ proposed “school quality” indicators, €”the required but nonacademic portion of each state’s plan to judge schools. Today, we’re going to take a look at states’ goals for raising student achievement and their timelines for doing so in the plans awaiting federal approval.

Arkansas, California, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas need to make some big improvements to their plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act, according to letters released publicly Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.

Back during the Obama administration, many states were working to tie teacher evaluation to student test scores, in part to get a piece of the $4 billion Race to the Top fund, or to get flexibility from the No Child Left Behind Act.

Every state has turned in a plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. So how do those plans stack up against each other and against No Child Left Behind, the previous version of the law? The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank headed up by Michael Petrili, a former Bush administration aide, is out with a look Tuesday. 

The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a hearing to discuss state innovation under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Since nearly all states have at least turned in their ESSA plans, and many ESSA plans have been approved, we now have a good idea of how states are answering those questions. Keep one thing in mind: ESSA requires certain low-performing schools to be identified as needing either targeted or comprehensive support.

It had been three years since the Supreme Court had declared “separate but equal” in America’s public schools unconstitutional, but the decision was met with bitter resistance across the South. It would take more than a decade before the last vestiges of Jim Crow fell away from classrooms.

Ultimately, twelve states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin—received a notice from the U.S. Department of Education that they needed to create a plan to reduce opt-outs due to low participation rates.

This report highlights significant investments made by both Republican and Democratic policymakers in state-funded pre-k programs for the fourth year in a row. In the 2015-16 budget year, 32 states and the District of Columbia raised funding levels of pre-k programs.

There were few fireworks Wednesday as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testified before a House appropriations subcommittee on the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal. DeVos deflected much of the skepticism she received and continued to push the administration’s support of school choice.

Earlier this week, the Brookings Institution released the fifth annual Education Choice and Competition Index, which ranks school choice in the largest school districts in the U.S. During her address, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos claimed that “parents are the primary point of accountability.”

Senate Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) authored an opinion piece on his efforts to roll back regulations under ESSA. Sen. Alexander argued that the removal of regulations is “not a trivial matter” but an effort to “restore to states, classroom teachers and parents decisions about what to do about their children in public schools.” Sen. Alexander’s resolution is co-sponsored by 10 Senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

President Donald Trump this week signed an executive order freezing hiring at many federal agencies, with the exception of military and public safety employees. So how might that effect the U.S. Department of Education’s work?

The Arkansas Fine Arts Curriculum Frameworks reflect the best contemporary philosophy and practices in arts education, provide courses that meet the needs of Arkansas students, and offer consistency of format and content across all disciplines and all levels.

The Arkansas English Language Arts Standards represent the work of the educators from across the state. These documents include expectations for what all students should know and be able to do. The standards also include teacher notes, which will help all teachers across the state implement the new standards with fidelity. Implementation of these standards may begin in the 2016-2017 school year with the expectation of full implementation in the 2017-2018 school year.

The Arkansas English Language Arts Standards represent the work of the educators from across the state. These documents include expectations for what all students should know and be able to do. The standards also include teacher notes, which will help all teachers across the state implement the new standards with fidelity.

These standards allow flexibility for each discipline to define the types of texts and forms of writing that are unique and appropriate for that content. The disciplinary literacy standards do not take the place of content standards; instead, reading and writing are literacy tools used to support students as they learn the content in each discipline.

Though the following Computer Science Independent Study and Computer Science Internship opportunities are part of the 2017-18 computer science implementation grid, the Arkansas State Board of Education adopted both as valid courses beginning in 2016-17.

Revision of each of the Arkansas Curriculum Frameworks every six years is required by the state education reform initiatives mandated by the State Board of Education. All curriculum framework documents result from the work of a committee of Arkansas educators representing every facet of Arkansas education, including geographic region, grade, school size and fiscal status, gender, ethnicity, and education experience.