NJ Spotlight--Agenda: Camden School Takeover to Get a Close-Up
New federal education law and school accountability requirements also on the agenda for State Board
Date: Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016
Time: 10 a.m.
Where: New Jersey Department of Education, 1st-floor conference room, 100 River View Plaza, Trenton
Year-end meeting: The State Board of Education will hold its last meeting of 2016 on Wednesday and bring attention to some big issues, while putting off some others. On the agenda will be the annual report from Camden public schools, which the state took over in 2013. Administration officials will also report on the latest from Washington and the new federal education law, known as the “Every Student Succeeds Act,” and how that impacts New Jersey. Not on the agenda — for at least this month — will be any further discussion of the administration’s controversial charter school regulations, although it looks like there is plenty of debate still to come on that topic.
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/16/12/05/agenda-camden-school-takeover-to-get-a-close-up/
John Mooney | December 6, 2016
NY Times--What America Can Learn About Smart Schools in Other Countries
Every three years, half a million 15-year-olds in 69 countries take a two-hour test designed to gauge their ability to think. Unlike other exams, the PISA, as it is known, does not assess what teenagers have memorized. Instead, it asks them to solve problems they haven’t seen before, to identify patterns that are not obvious and to make compelling written arguments. It tests the skills, in other words, that machines have not yet mastered.
The latest results, released Tuesday morning, reveal the United States to be treading water in the middle of the pool. In math, American teenagers performed slightly worse than they usually do on the PISA — below average for the developed world, which means they scored worse than nearly three dozen countries. They did about the same as always in science and reading, which is to say average for the developed world.
But that scoreboard is the least interesting part of the findings. More intriguing is what the PISA has revealed about which conditions seem to make smart countries smart. In that realm, the news was not all bad for American teenagers.
Amanda Ripley DEC. 6, 2016
Washington Post-- Supply of U.S. high school graduates is stagnating, posing challenge for colleges
The nation’s total output of high school graduates peaked in 2013 at nearly 3.5 million and is projected to stagnate for most of the next decade, but the Hispanic share is expected to boom, according to a new report.
The demographic shifts point to major recruiting challenges for colleges following an era of steady growth in high school graduates that started in the late 1990s. While that growth had provided a solid pipeline for schools focused on serving traditional students between the ages of 18 to 22, the supply of these students appears to be dwindling or leveling off in Maryland, Virginia and elsewhere.
As a result, many colleges have been forced to rethink how to fill seats and educate incoming students who are more likely than their predecessors to be the first in their families to pursue a bachelor’s degree.
By Nick Anderson December 6 at 12:01 AM