background preloader

News about Education

Facebook Twitter

What Florida is doing with high-stakes standardized testing. School laundromat: Principal installs one when students are bullied for dirty clothes - CNN. Choice page. #RedforEd teacher strike driven by the lie- tax cuts raise $ click 2x. West Virginia Teachers Win; DeVos Gets Pushback : NPR Ed. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visited Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and met with staff and survivors of the February shooting.

West Virginia Teachers Win; DeVos Gets Pushback : NPR Ed

Lynne Sladky/AP hide caption toggle caption Lynne Sladky/AP Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visited Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and met with staff and survivors of the February shooting. Welcome to our weekly roundup of education news! Betsy DeVos used Shutterstock picture to attack U.S. schools. Teachers aren’t having it. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos used a picture available on Shutterstock as an example of bad teaching practice in U.S. schools today — and teachers are accusing her of misrepresenting their classrooms.

Betsy DeVos used Shutterstock picture to attack U.S. schools. Teachers aren’t having it.

DeVos on Tuesday published a tweet that said classrooms look the same as they did many years ago, and she used “then” and “now” photos to underscore her often-stated contention that public schools in the United States have not innovated since the Industrial Revolution more than a century ago (see the tweet below). The “now” picture is available, royalty-free, on Shutterstock.com; it is the first picture that appears under the search term “classroom.” Does this look familiar? SAT optional a leveler? not so much. When colleges and universities began to make the SAT an optional part of the admissions process, the hope was that it would expand access to the nation’s most selective institutions to groups that had historically been shut out.

SAT optional a leveler? not so much

The reality is – at least at selective liberal arts colleges – the decision by a growing number of colleges to make the SAT optional does not appear to be the great equalizer that many hoped it would be. That may come as sobering news to those who celebrated the fact that the number of colleges that have gone test-optional recently surpassed 1,000. Despite that milestone, research that colleagues and I conducted shows that instead of expanding economic and racial diversity at American colleges, test-optional policies have actually served to make selective colleges even more selective, at least on paper. But we found no increase in diversity at test-optional colleges.

Are charter schools the new Enron. In 2001, Texas-based energy giant Enron shocked the world by declaring bankruptcy.

Are charter schools the new Enron

Thousands of employees lost their jobs, and investors lost billions. As a scholar who studies the legal and policy issues pertaining to school choice, I’ve observed that the same type of fraud that occurred at Enron has been cropping up in the charter school sector. A handful of school officials have been caught using the Enron playbook to divert funding slated for these schools into their own pockets. As school choice champions like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos push to make charter schools a larger part of the educational landscape, it’s important to understand the Enron scandal and how charter schools are vulnerable to similar schemes. Closure of charter school that DeVos praised as 'shining example' When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and first lady Melania Trump visited Excel Academy Public Charter School last spring, DeVos praised the school as a “shining example of a school meeting the needs of its students, parents and community.”

Closure of charter school that DeVos praised as 'shining example'

Melania Trump called the charter school “an exceptional example of a school preparing young women both academically and personally so that they may succeed in a global community.” The visit made international headlines due to the fact that it also featured Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan. In terms of publicity, a school could not ask for a better platform. Unfortunately, we now know the praise the school got during its brief time on the world stage did not match its poor performance.

On Jan. 11, the DC Public Charter School Board voted unanimously, 6-0, to shut down the Pre-K-8, all-girls school at the end of the current school year. These For-Profit Schools Are ‘Like a Prison’ This story was co-published with Slate.

These For-Profit Schools Are ‘Like a Prison’

Teenagers at Paramount Academy sometimes came home with mysterious injuries. An alternative school for sixth- through 12th-graders with behavioral or academic problems, Paramount occupied a low-slung, brick and concrete building on a dead-end road in hard-luck Reading, Pennsylvania, a city whose streets are littered with signs advertising bail bondsmen, pay-day lenders, and pawn shops.