News

Amarillo Globe News: "Texas could offer school districts a carrot to share out-of-classroom costs this fall before at least one senator prods them with a stick."

Education Next: "Summers past have brought us front-page firestorms and inane back-to-school stories. But this August might one day be famous for marking the start of a fresh round of honest conversation about the achievement gap—and the relationship between race, poverty and our schools."

Houston Chronicle: "A fight between Gov. Rick Perry and Washington has left local school leaders wondering whether they will see $830 million in federal funds to help plug budget holes."

IES: "America's schools and colleges will welcome back large numbers of students this fall as population increases and high enrollment rates continue to be reflected in more students in America's schools than ever. In particular, record numbers of prekindergarten and kindergarten students are expected to enter the Nation's public school systems."

Austin American Statesman: "When Texas education officials noticed a spike in the number of students leaving middle and high schools, something just didn't add up."

San Antonio Express News: "Senate Education Chairwoman Florence Shapiro was stunned a few years ago when state auditors came back to her with a white surrender flag: They could not answer her request to figure out which programs designed to help struggling, low-income students worked, and which didn't."

Abilene Reporter News: "The Texas Education Agency has begun an investigation into the large number of high school students who have withdrawn from public school to begin home schooling in the past couple of years."

Stateline.org: "It sounded at first like the best of news for South Carolina. The $26 billion jobs bill passed by Congress earlier this month would send $143.7 million to the state, which has lost between 2,800 and 3,900 teaching jobs over the past two years."

ABC: " With budget pressures getting harder to manage, elected officials have already started pitching ideas on how to increase revenue."

Fox.com: "In the midst of the political season, one of the issues most discussed nationwide is education. In the Lone Star State, Governor Rick Perry is drawing support for a new school savings incentive program."

LA Times: "With a federal award of $330 million, California and 43 other states joined Thursday to replace the much-maligned year-end English and math standardized tests with new nationwide tests that could better measure student learning and teacher performance."

NY Times: "Standardized exams — the multiple-choice, bubble tests in math and reading that have played a growing role in American public education in recent years — are being overhauled."

Houston Chronicle: "In an attempt to ensure that public school districts aren’t disguising high school dropouts, the Texas Education Agency is conducting an audit of students who withdrew under the auspice of home schooling."

Governor Perry Announces School Savings Incentive

NY Times: "A growing number of school districts have adopted a system called value-added modeling to answer that question, provoking battles from Washington to Los Angeles."

This is a new report from EdVance, the Regional Educational Laboratory for the Southwest, that examines alignment of the English language arts and reading TEKS (ELAR) to two other national frameworks.

USA Today: "Robert Neuman says he has seen "every student problem imaginable" in his 25 years as an associate dean of academic advising at Marquette University in Milwaukee."

Washington Post: "To mark the new school year, I asked a dozen teachers this question: “If you could magically make parents do ONE thing this coming school year to support their child, what would it be?”"

ESchoolNews: "In a move that has many local educators seething, the Los Angeles Times has published an online database comparing more than 6,000 elementary school teachers based on a controversial statistical method that relies on test-score data to determine their effectiveness."

Dallas Morning News: "There is the mainstream "recommended plan" diploma earned by 80 percent of graduates. But there's also the "minimum plan" graduate who may have earned fewer credits. And there's a "distinguished plan" for high achievers."

Fort Worth Star Telegram: " The state's top education official, who went to Washington in pursuit of $830 million in federal education aid, left empty-handed Friday but said the state hasn't given up the fight."

Austin American Statesman: "A high-level meeting of state and federal officials aimed at finding a way for Texas to access $830 million in emergency education aid failed to produce a clear path forward, according to the Texas Education Agency."

Dallas Morning News: "Texas will be headed down the wrong path if it invests more money in its network of independent charter schools, the president of the National Education Association said Friday, citing mixed student achievement results in those schools."

Dallas Morning News: "State and federal education officials met in Washington on Friday but did not come to an agreement over $830 million in extra school funds Texas stands to receive."

Fort Worth Star Telegram: "Mayors from several large Texas cities huddled at Cowboys Stadium on Friday and discussed how to defend their communities from unfunded mandates during the upcoming legislative session."

Lubbock Online: "In the last few months almost every legislative committee and subcommittee — and there are more than 70, including about a dozen formed after last year’s session ended — has held a hearing. On Thursday alone, five House panels and one Senate group met to discuss a wide range of issues."

Dallas Morning News: "School districts have started re-examining their medication policies in the face of shrinking budgets and increased abuse of over-the-counter drugs. For direction, they turn to ambiguous laws and outdated guidelines that leave some schools stocking a pharmacy and others refusing to distribute pills at all."

Carolina Journal: "Students in North Carolina’s public schools face end-of-grade and end-of-course tests to determine how well they’ve mastered the material taught during the school year. But who tests the tests?"

Education News: "Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master’s degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned."

Dallas Morning News: "Texas high school students have a year before they must begin to pass a battery of 12 end-of-course tests to graduate, but results for hundreds of thousands of students already taking some of the exams portend a rocky start for the new testing program."

Washington Post: "The D.C. mayoral race is deeply split on most issues, but everyone agrees on one thing: We must reduce the achievement gap between minority and white students. It is too bad, then, that that the gap is such a mindless measure of school progress."

LA Times: "National and local teachers unions sharply criticized The Times on Sunday when the newspaper published a database of about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade city school teachers ranked by their effectiveness in raising student test scores."

Houston Chronicle: "Back in the Paleozoic Era, when we were kids, nobody wore seat belts or bike helmets. To do our homework, we used quaint technologies: "card catalogs," "encyclopedias" and "Wite-Out." To chat with a friend, we looked up her dad's name in a "phone book," then "dialed" the number next to it. And every day in the school cafeteria, the lunch ladies scooped unspeakable glop onto our

Economic Policy Institute: "Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers"

San Antonio Express News: "Texas school districts worried about the state of education are trying to enlist the public's help — even grabbing people at Friday night football games."

The Whole Child: "California is ahead of the curve in mapping the health and well-being of its students statewide. The Lucile Packard Foundation’s website Kidsdata catalogues all relevant health, wellness, risk, and resilience data available on students and stores it in a searchable website."

Florida Sentinel: "A judge has denied Florida's request to toss out an education adequacy lawsuit, ruling the plaintiffs — including three Orlando mothers — can challenge in court the state's commitment to public education."

Phi Delta Kappan: "The PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools is a well-known research instrument. Conducted annually, it allows PDK members and other educators and policy makers to track public opinion about one of this nation's most important institutions, its public schools."

USA Today: "Two years of cuts in state support saddled the Natomas Unified School District in Sacramento this spring with what school board president B. Teri Burns calls "horribly painful" choices: fewer teachers and larger classes, or keeping teachers but cutting athletics, counseling and after-school programs."

USA Today: "Since first lady Michelle Obama planted a garden at the White House in the spring of 2009 and invited schoolchildren to help tend and harvest the produce, more school gardens have been sprouting up across the country."

Washington Post: "I have been avidly following the Los Angeles Times publication of value-added data from elementary schools in the L.A. district. After Sunday's latest installment, I posted an appreciation of what they were doing, but expressed frustration with some gaps in the story, and what I considered at least slight misrepresentation of some of their data."

-PEPG Survey

Austin American Statesman: "Top state officials said Thursday that it is unlikely Texas will be able to secure $830 million in emergency education aid from Washington without a legal fight."

NY Times: "When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on Tuesday the latest states to win the Race to the Top competition — and a share of $3.4 billion in federal financing — he said they were chosen because they outlined the boldest plans for shaking up their public school systems."

LA Times: "U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will call for all states and school districts to make public whether their instructors are doing enough to raise students' test scores and to share other school-level information with parents, according to a text of a speech he is scheduled to make Wednesday."

"Combs Honors Local Governments for Financial Transparency During Abilene Event"

"Gov. Perry Announces Launch of Texas Education on iTunes U"

Dallas Morning News: "About 2,000 Dallas County schoolchildren still have not received the vaccinations they must have to enter classrooms, the county's public health expert said Tuesday."

Houston Chronicle: "The group of Texas school districts that lost a court battle in June over a new grading law has decided not to appeal the judge's decision that bars them from forcing teachers to give students grades they didn't earn."

Dallas Morning News: "A group of school districts that sued the state over its truth-in-grading law will not appeal a court ruling in June that upheld the law and barred districts from requiring teachers to give minimum grades on student report cards."