November 30, 2012

Local News

The News Journal
School takes new shape
Work is scheduled to begin today on a major expansion of Seaford Senior High School, putting in motion plans voters approved last year to add two wings to the building and tailor the space for independent academies within the school. “This day is about our community’s commitment to your education,” Seaford Superintendent Shawn Joseph said. Much of the design of the addition, which puts two new wings in front of the school’s current entrance and redesigns its second-floor library, is meant to help the school’s New Tech Academy, a technology-oriented track of courses that mixes disparate topics of study into a single class and encourages skills useful in the workforce.

National News

M Live
Michigan schools are improving teacher-evaluation systems, but more resources needed  
Michigan districts are improving their teacher-evaluation systems, but they are struggling with issues of fairness, consistency, and effectiveness, says a new report by Education Trust-Midwest. Those struggles make it clear that districts need state resources and support in developing evaluation tools, according to the report.

USA Today
States post grads’ pay by college and degree
A small but growing number of states are publishing databases comparing the earning power of degrees for college graduates based on where they went to school. Virginia and Arkansas have published user-friendly search tools showing average first-year salaries for recent college graduates. Tennessee has published a similar tool, and Texas, Colorado, and Nevada are preparing to release similar data.

Education Week
Duncan sharpens second-term agenda, stresses teacher quality
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan continued to lay out his priorities for the next four years in a speech today, emphasizing that he thinks teacher preparation is broken and that the best educators need to be teaching the highest-need children. As for renewed areas of emphasis, he clearly wants to focus on teacher and principal quality. He said teacher education programs are “part of the problem.” Without getting specific, Duncan said there are a “number of things we plan to do,” and said the department is looking at some sort of competitive initiative to foster innovation in schools of education.

Washington Post
Colleges agree to recruit KIPP alumni
Twenty colleges and universities, including some of the nation’s most prestigious, have pledged in the past year to recruit more students from a prominent charter school network that focuses on educating the rural and urban poor. The signed pledges, unusual in the competitive world of college admissions, set recruiting targets and establish a detailed framework for cooperation, seeking to create a pipeline to college for KIPP’s mostly black and Latino students.

Related Topics: Higher Education, Teacher Effectiveness, Teacher Evaluation