January 22, 2016
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January 22, 2016
Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Report: Schools increasingly turn to 'underprepared' teachers to fill vacancies
Louis Freedberg, EdSource
To cope with a widening shortage of teachers, California school districts are hiring an increasing number of teachers with “substandard” permits and credentials, as well as relying on short-term substitute teachers, according to a new report.
New L.A. schools chief favors steady progress and collaboration over drastic change
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles' beleaguered school system doesn't need the aggressive shake-up some critics have called for so much as consistent, steady progress and collaboration, new schools Supt. Michelle King said in a meeting Thursday with The Times.
How to make LA Unified a better school district
Alex Cohen with Monica Bushman, KPCC; John Rogers, UCLA; David Plank, Stanford University
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Unified School Board named long-time LAUSD employee Michelle King as the new superintendent. The move came after a lengthy, nation-wide search. Leading the nation's second largest school district is a tough job— with lagging student achievement, dwindling enrollment and funding problems. How can anyone begin to turn a district like this around?
Language, Culture, and Power
Children's book 'A Birthday Cake for George Washington' pulled over depiction of happy slaves
Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times
The publisher Scholastic has announced it will stop distribution of a children's book called "A Birthday Cake for George Washington" after it was widely criticized for its depiction of happy slaves baking a cake, the Associated Press reports.
Course correction: The case for correctional education in U. S. prisons
Doug Irving, RAND
Daniels is an inmate at the California Institution for Men, a sprawling prison complex about 35 miles east of Los Angeles. He’s 49 years old, a prison veteran with 14 felony convictions on his record. His latest offense, for making criminal threats, helped land him in one place where RAND’s study showed he stands a good chance of turning his life around: A prison classroom.
At-risk students improve when they take a race and ethnicity class – study
Eli Rosenberg, The Guardian
High school students saw large improvements in their grades and attendance records when they enrolled in a class dedicated to exploring race and ethnicity, researchers in California found.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
Using computers widens the achievement gap in writing, a federal study finds
Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
Low-performing fourth-graders do poorly in writing tests given by computer, but high-performing students do better.
Fewer than one in seven community college students transfer and get a bachelor’s degree—but there is new hope
Meredith Kolodner, The Hechinger Report
Low-income students who transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges are less likely to get a degree than their wealthier peers, a new report shows. But in a sign of hope, their success varies dramatically by state and by college.
The Obama administration proposes $2 billion more in college aid
Anya Kamenetz, NPR
President Obama has increased college aid by over $50 billion since coming into office. And he's trying to do more. Acting Education Secretary John King announced two new proposals today that would expand the Pell Grant program, the biggest pot of federal money for students with financial need.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
5 facts about race in America
Bruce Drake, Pew Research Center
Ever since it was first observed as a national holiday in 1986, Martin Luther King Jr. Day has been a time for reflection on the state of race relations in the U.S. and how much progress has been made – or not – in achieving racial equality. Pew Research Center has tracked this subject over time. Here are five of our key findings.
Why are there so few black children in gifted programs?
Alia Wong, The Atlantic
It’s a reality that’s rattled the education world for years: Black and Latino students are far less likely than their white and Asian peers to be assigned to gifted-and-talented programs. The odds of getting assigned to such programs are 66 percent lower for black students and 47 percent lower for Latino students than they are for their white counterparts.
Acting U.S. Education Secretary: Civil rights community must be vigilant
Emma Brown, The Washington Post
John B. King Jr. plans to use his first speech as acting U.S. Education Secretary to call on the civil rights community to be vigilant as the nation ushers in a new federal law affecting its 100,000 public schools.
Public Schools and Private $
Nonprofit formed to promote charter school expansion plan gets new director
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC
The nonprofit formed to advance a plan to rapidly expand the number of Los Angeles students who attend charter schools announced on Thursday that it will be led by a long-time charter school lobbyist and activist. Myrna Castrejón will lead Great Public Schools Now, which launched in November by the backers of the charter expansion plan that was first developed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
Netflix chief announces $100 million fund for education
Emma Brown, The Washington Post
Netflix founder and chief executive Reed Hastings, a longtime supporter of charter schools, is creating a $100 million foundation for education, he announced on his Facebook page Tuesday.
3 troubling ways the charter school boom is like the subprime mortgage crisis
Edwin Rios, Mother Jones
Acting US Secretary of Education John King has called charter schools "good laboratories for innovation." It's that kind of language that's helped the number of public charters jump from 1,542 in 1999 to 6,723 in 2014—when more than 1 million students sat on charter school waiting lists, including a whopping 163,000 in New York City alone. But, as four researchers argue in a recent study in the University of Richmond Law Review, charter schools could be on the same path that led to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Other News of Note
Activism is good teaching: Reclaiming the profession
Katherine Crawford-Garrett, Michelle Perez, Rebecca M. Sánchez, Amanda Short, Kersti Tyson, Rethinking Schools
Two elementary school teachers in Albuquerque resist the proliferation of harmful standardized tests. They see it as a professional responsibility.
Just News from Center X is a free weekly education news blast edited by Jenn Ayscue.
