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NJ Spotlight--Budget Committee Grills SDA Head on Spending — and Hiring and Firing
Embattled executive director of Schools Development Authority defers answering most questions, saying situation is under review by counsel
The annual hearings on state spending for public education are invariably highlights of the Legislature’s budget season — understandably so, given that school aid and other costs make up more than a third of New Jersey’s annual spending plan.
John Mooney | April 11, 2019
NJ Spotlight--NYC’s New Policy on Measles Vaccine Prompts Renewed Focus in NJ
There have been far fewer cases of the highly contagious respiratory disease in Garden State; health officials here continue to promote vaccinations
New York City’s decision to threaten fines and legal citations against those who have not been vaccinated against measles could indirectly benefit New Jersey’s immunization efforts, although experts here agreed such measures are not necessary to address the measles outbreak on this side of the Hudson River.
Lilo H. Stainton | April 11, 2019
Star Ledger--College admission scandal defined by all the ‘What ifs” | Opinion
There are many lessons to be learned from the world of lies and deceit of the celebrity college admission scandal, which federal investigators named the “Varsity Blues” case. Please allow us to offer a different perspective.
Jennifer Myers and Tracy L. Henry| South Jersey Times Guest Columnists| Posted Apr 10, 3:27 PM
Education Week--How Schools Are Responding to Migrant Children
Tens of thousands of child migrants from Central America are in public schools. Many educators are working to support them, but the intensity of their needs can be a strain.
As I have spent the last several weeks talking to educators about working with migrant children, some have cried.
Their tears, they say, come from a mix of worry, empathy, and frustration with the negative, sometimes hateful, rhetoric surrounding the unprecedented flow of immigrant families across the southern border.
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/04/10/how-schools-are-responding-to-migrant-children.html
Kavitha Cardoza| April 9, 2019
Politics K-12 (Education Week)--DeVos Defends School Choice as Democrats Demand Answers on Arming Teachers
House Democrats who focus on education peppered U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos with questions about her vision for school choice, arming teachers, and federal education law during a lengthy, often confrontational hearing here Wednesday.
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the committee chairman, set the tone when he highlighted the Education Department's core mission of ensuring equitable opportunities for all students. "Unfortunately under the president's fiscal 2020 budget, it would be nearly impossible to meet that challenge," he said.
Andrew Ujifusa on April 10, 2019 3:46 PM
The Atlantic--College-Admissions Hysteria Is Not the Norm
A focus on highly selective schools obscures the experience of the vast majority of American undergraduates.
Every year at this time, headlines reveal once again what everyone already knows: America’s top institutions are selective—very. Harvard took a record-low 4.5 percent of the applicants to its 2023 class. Yale accepted 5.9 percent, the same as the University of Chicago.
These numbers—albeit wild—are outliers, representing an almost-negligible slice of the United States’ higher-education ecosystem. Approximately 10.8 million undergraduates were enrolled in the country’s more than 2,500 four-year universities in the fall of 2017, according to an Atlantic analysis of raw figures from the Education Department’s data center.
The majority of students—more than 80 percent—attend schools, such as Texas A&M, Rutgers, and Simmons University, that accept more than half their applicants.
Alia Wong| Apr 10, 2019
