According to Larry Pogemiller, the Commissioner of the Office of Higher Education, “The five chosen programs all demonstrate innovative and promising teacher preparation methods that can help Minnesota schools meet the challenge of finding the teachers they need.”

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — According to new research, one-third of community college students enrolled in remedial coursework don’t even need them.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — Armed with a master’s degree in theatre education and teaching licensure from the University of Minnesota, actress Joetta Wright uses her craft to culturally and socially educate the community via several avenues.

Changes are coming to how Minnesota school district performances will be judged by the state’s Department of Education.

The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (MSR) and its nonprofit namesake the Spokesman-Recorder 501(c)(3) hosted the 23rd annual Graduation Celebration Thursday, May 24 at the Metropolitan Ballroom in Golden Valley. More than 200 community members, graduating students and their parents attended the free scholarship dinner and ceremony awards. Ten students were presented with Cecil E. Newman Scholarships at the event themed “Education and Graduation: It’s a family affair.”

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN RECORDER — On Monday, May 14, thousands of protestors, including 13 near the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, were arrested as they engaged in a national groundswell of nonviolent civil disobedience. According to the Minnesota Poor People’s Campaign, this calls for “new initiatives to fight systematic poverty and racism, immediate attention to ecological devastation, and measures to curb militarism and the war economy.”

To be sure, ESSA isn’t a school choice law. School choice fans in Congress weren’t able to persuade their colleagues to include Title I portability in the law, which would have allowed federal funding to follow students to the public school of their choice.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — Several years ago, Dr. Renaldo Blocker was reflecting on the importance of mentors in his life. “We realized that we were fortunate to have a support system throughout our academic and professional career.” Blocker is a Mayo Clinic healthcare systems engineering assistant professor.

The Every Student Succeeds Act is supposed to bring about a big change in school improvement. The law says states and districts can use any kind of interventions they want in low-performing schools, as long as they have evidence to back them up.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — In honor of April being National Autism Awareness Month, Sheletta Brundidge shares the first of a two-part story chronicling her discovery that three of her four children were on the autism spectrum.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN RECORDER — “My hoodie was an act of silent dissent. Today, I completely understand when my students want to do the same, even with me in front of the room. Academia and public schools are spaces where people of color often feel underrepresented, unwelcome and unheard…”

VOICE AND VIEWPOINT — When a child at J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School couldn’t afford lunch, Philando Castile apparently never hesitated to pull out his wallet to pay for their meal. Now, a charity founded in honor of Castile, who was fatally shot by a police officer during a 2016 traffic stop, has successfully continued his …

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — Laverne McCartney-Knighton took on the initiative of helping UNCF raise scholarship funds in June 2017 as the new regional development director of the Minneapolis location. With 24 office locations in the Twin Cities, each is poised to bring in substantial funding to help students across the nation attend colleges. Since raised funds are distributed through the Washington, D.C. office, local offices can focus on fundraising.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN RECORDER — According to the most recent federal data, more than 13.2 million children — one in five  — live in poverty; six million live in extreme poverty; 14.8 million children live in food-insecure households; more than one million homeless children are in our schools; 3.9 million children still lack health insurance; the majority of public school students of all races cannot read or compute at grade level; nearly 700,000 children are abused and/or neglected; nearly 50,000 children are in juvenile justice facilities or adult jails and prisons; and 3,128 children and teens were killed with a gun in 2016, enough to fill 156 classrooms of 20 children.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN RECORDER — Poverty and poor health worldwide are inextricably linked… Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of poor health. Poverty increases the chances of poor health. Poor health in turn traps communities in poverty.  — Health Poverty Action

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — Last August, I introduced the first column in a six-part series declaring that “poverty is not a character flaw,” but rather a math problem (and so much more). The math problems identified during the course of the series focused on America’s substantial inequities in employment, education, housing and transportation.

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.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at a time where the words he spoke were radical, important, and needing to be both heard and said. Fifty-five years later, we still have so much farther to go.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — “We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quote from his “I Have a Dream” speech, August 28, 1963.

MINNESOTA SPOKESMAN-RECORDER — “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps perpetrates it. He who accepts evil without protesting it is really cooperating with it.” —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos today announced the approval of Minnesota and West Virginia’s consolidated state plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

EDUCATION WEEK — Minnesota, New York, Virginia, and West Virginia have some work to do on their plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Most parents and educators want school cafeterias to serve food that is fresh, local, organic, and nutritious. But the truth is that many school nutrition programs operate on a freezer-to-oven basis. Meals arrive highly processed and ready to pop into the oven.

“What’s the latest timeline for distribution of Title IVA funds to states? Are they able to receive funds as soon as their plans are approved? Do you have any sense of how many states will opt to administer those grants competitively, given the smaller appropriation?”

Senate education committee Democrats used the confirmation hearing of two top U.S. Department of Education nominees to make their case against the Trump administration’s favorite K-12 policy: School choice.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., told a roomful of state education chiefs Tuesday that he’ll push to fund the new block grant Congress created under the Every Student Succeeds Act to help districts cover the cost of health, safety, technology programs, and moer. And he said he looks forward to the kind of innovation and change the new law can bring to states.

For the past five months, we have followed the development of Minnesota’s state accountability plan as mandated by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). While the US Department of Education (USDE) has defined what must be included in four of the plans’ required indicators, states have the freedom to choose which measures they will include in their fifth indicator, of school quality/student success (SQ/SS).

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.

The nominee to be the U.S. Department of Education’s lead attorney, under questioning from the top Democrat for education in the Senate, said he would tell states and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to follow the Every Student Succeeds Act.

The grinding, two-year process of drafting accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act has upended states’ K-12 political landscape and laid bare long-simmering factions among power brokers charged with putting the new federal education law into effect this school year.

Former Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., an Every Student Succeeds Act architect, was one of the most prominent voices clamoring for more local control over K-12 when the law was wending its way through Congress.

On Tuesday, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) kicked off their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) public comment regional meetings at the Wilder Foundation in Saint Paul.

Our blog post last week introduced the topic of “charter-district collaboration”, and reported on the status of Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact, as well as the Minneapolis Public Schools and Hiawatha Academies Collaboration Agreement.

Yesterday, a twelve-member task force, convened by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), released a report on “Quality Education.”

On July 4th, the vast majority of the 7,000 delegates from the National Education Association (NEA) voted to adopt a new charter school policy statement. The new statement is an overhaul of NEA’s former charter school policy statement that they had adopted in 2001.

Over the past 20 years, the number of English learner (EL) students in Minnesota has increased by 300 percent, making them the state’s fastest growing student group, and they currently constitute 8.3 percent of the state’s total K-12 public education student enrollment. However, despite the rapid growth, their academic progress, as compared to their non-EL peers, has plateaued.

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.