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The Record--Editorial: School funding winners and losers
The best news to come out the state budget deal brokered last week was the $150 million increase in state aid to schools. It is the first time the state is embracing a 2008 law that sought to bring more equity to the distribution of state monies for public education. What was agreed upon last week is a start toward that goal.
Like all deals, there were winners and losers. As Staff Writers Hannan Adely and David Zimmer reported, most districts in Passaic, Bergen, Morris and Essex counties will see an increase in aid, about 10 remain at current funding levels, and four will see cuts. Englewood, Ringwood, West Morris Regional and West Milford are losing state aid. The timing on the state aid changes is hard on districts that have already set budgets for the coming school year.
NorthJersey Published 1:40 p.m. ET July 10, 2017 | Updated 4:16 p.m. ET July 10, 2017
Washington Post—Op-Ed: Chicago will require high school students to have a plan after graduation. Good.
THE JOB of K-12 education traditionally has been considered complete when students walk across the stage to get their diploma. That is about to change in Chicago with an ambitious, and controversial, initiative requiring public school students to have a post-graduation plan to earn a diploma. Chicago leaders are right to make official what long has been recognized — the need for more than a high school diploma to succeed in today’s economy — and, more importantly, to accept responsibility for helping students meet that challenge.
Starting in 2020, under a plan championed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) and unanimously approved by the school board, diplomas will be tied to students devising post-secondary plans. High school seniors must show they’ve been accepted into college, or the military, or into a trade or “gap-year” program, or have secured a job. The idea is to raise expectations and thus produce better outcomes for students.
Editorial Board July 8
The Atlantic--One School's Quest for Personalized Public Education
A San Diego-area high school hopes a new program based on individual interests will keep more students in class. Will it work?
SAN DIEGO—To understand just how far Vista High School will go to keep kids interested in school, consider the case of 17-year-old Hernan Hernandez and his skateboard.
Hernan, an avid skateboarder, was bored in gym class. So were his classmates. So, late this spring, Hernan approached Principal Anthony Barela with a potential solution: What about offering them a skateboarding course instead?
“I’m pretty sure if you told them they could skate and get an A, they would do that,” Hernan told Barela, a former football coach who is maniacal about keeping Vista High School students in school.
Barela agreed: He’ll work with Hernan to design a skateboarding course, part of the school’s dramatic transformation toward meeting the needs and interests of the roughly 2,600 students, most of whom are Hispanic and working class, who attend this open-air suburban high school. Next year, Vista will enter an uncharted era: Every freshman will embark on a new curriculum designed to help them find and pursue their interests.
Mike Elsen-Rooney| Jul 10, 2017
Education Week--Just 20 Percent of K-12 Students Are Learning a Foreign Language
Arguing that the inability to communicate in any language but English constitutes a threat to the nation's economic and military security, two recent studies have painted a grim picture of foreign-language education in the nation's K-12 schools.
The reports from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and American Councils for International Education found that public schools and state departments of education are struggling to find qualified world language instructors and unequipped to track local and national trends on language learning.
The American Councils for International Education survey—which sought state-by-state data on enrollment in foreign language courses—estimates that 10.6 million K-12 students in the United States are studying a world language or American Sign Language.
That's only one out of every five students.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/06/21/just-20-percent-of-k-12-students-are.html
By Corey Mitchell } June 20, 2017
