September 23, 2014
National News
Sioux City Journal
Lawmakers say education needs more than just money
South Dakota’s superintendents say schools are struggling to fill open positions mainly because of low teacher pay, while policymakers suggest a solution to the teacher shortage isn’t simple and the problem won’t be fixed with funding alone.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Uncluttering the pathway to the diploma
Community-college students who register for their college-level classes before the term begins are 11 times more likely to persist into their second year, while students whose instructors enforce strict attendance policies are nearly three times as likely to complete remedial-mathematics courses.
KQED
How looking at student work keeps teachers and kids on track
Increasingly, educators are focusing on teaching students about their learning brains, in addition to specific subject content. Research by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and others on developing academic mindsets have helped show that students’ perceptions of themselves as learners plays a large role in their academic success. Evaluating student work throughout the creation process is a great way to make sure students are grasping the concepts being taught along the way, and can be a gentle way of focusing evaluation toward improvement.
Education Week
Two school districts share urban education prize
The school districts in Gwinnett County, Ga., and Orange County, Fla., have won the $1 million Broad Prize, the first time in the contest’s dozen years that more than one district was chosen for the annual award recognizing improvements in urban education. The districts—both are demographically diverse and enroll more than 160,000 students each—were the only finalists for this year’s award. The districts will split the prize money, with each receiving $500,000 to be used for college scholarships for seniors graduating in 2015.
Tension marks Missouri education goals rewrite
Educators and parents chosen to rewrite learning benchmarks for Missouri children are divided on how to move forward. Work groups tasked with writing new education standards spent their first meeting Monday clashing over the state education department’s involvement and how to rework the national goals currently in place.
EdSource
Officials optimistic about spring assessments
Last spring more than 3 million students in California, the largest number ever to take an online test in the state, took field tests of new assessments aligned to the Common Core state standards without major technical breakdowns or system crashes, according to state officials. Just as California avoided the massive online breakdowns that occurred with the federal healthcare.gov website, education leaders here are now optimistic that when the full battery of tests are administered this spring for the first time that the process should go relatively smoothly.