December 18, 2012

Local News

The News Journal
Odyssey’s school plans delayed
Odyssey Charter School’s plan for three new schools on a historic site near Hockessin has been delayed after New Castle County attorneys said the school can’t automatically build as big of a K-12 campus as school officials would like.

National News

Education Week
Assessment group chooses tests for college readiness in math 
The decision about whether students are college-ready will be based only on the exams students take at the end of a math sequence rather than on a combination of results from all the courses in the sequence, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers, or PARCC, decided.

State chiefs to examine teacher prep, licensing 
Twenty-five state superintendents are vowing to take action to update their systems of teacher preparation and licensing. The announcement from the Council of Chief State School Officers is probably state officials’ most explicit promise to engage in changes to teacher preparation. They will implement recommendations in a report by a CCSSO task force.

NEA, AFT to build Common Core tools
The two national teachers’ unions have won $11 million to build an online warehouse of instructional tools for the Common Core State Standards. Student Achievement Partners, whose founders led the writing of the standards, is also a grantee. It will work with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association and their teachers to build the tools and post them on Student Achievement Partners’ website.

Lawrence Journal World
Audit finds much lower costs than expected for Common Core State Standards in reading and math 
Implementing the Common Core State Standards will cost Kansas districts an estimated $32 million to $60 million over the next five years, according to a legislative audit. That is significantly lower than estimates from two national studies that estimated the costs at $100 million to $180 million. And the state could save about $9 million since it will not have to develop new reading and math standards.