Star Ledger--Court strikes down PARCC requirements for high school graduation
New Jersey’s controversial rules that force students to pass PARCC tests before graduating from high school are already regarded as confusing and chaotic. Now, they’ve been declared invalid.
A panel of state appellate court judges on Monday struck down the requirement that students must pass state exams in Algebra I and 10th grade English, saying that the rules — which were put into place in 2016, to take effect with the class of 2020 — don’t match a state law that requires students to pass just a single test in 11th grade in order to graduate.
Adam Clark | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com| Updated Jan 1, 9:42 PM; Posted Dec 31
Chalkbeat--What worked (and didn’t) this year: 10 lessons from education research to take into 2019
It’s hard to keep up with education research. So with the end of the year approaching, we’re here to help.
We’ve synthesized what we learned from research in 2018, focusing on which policies seemed to work and which didn’t. We’re using “what worked” as a shorthand for policies that improved test scores or affected metrics like suspensions, attendance, and high school graduation rates.
(A few important caveats apply: Sometimes, policies affect some measures but not others. And just because a policy works one place doesn’t mean it will succeed elsewhere.)
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/12/21/education-research-2018/
Matt Barnum - December 21, 2018
Education Week--Top Education Stories of 2018: Education Week’s Most Viewed
Get a sense of what was high on educators’ priority lists in 2018. This list of Education Week’s 10 most-viewed news articles and blog posts provides insight into what piqued the interest of our audience of teachers, school leaders, and more.
Education Week|December 20, 2018
Washington Post--A teacher makes 2019 education predictions — some he 'desperately’ hopes won’t come true
This is the eighth year that I am publishing veteran teacher Larry Ferlazzo’s education predictions for the coming year — and, frankly, some of them are bold, if not scary. (You can see his predictions from earlier years at the bottom of this post.) I don’t quite agree with all of them, but it’s not my list, it’s his! Let him know what you think in the comments.
Ferlazzo teaches English and social studies at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento. He has written nine books on education, writes a teacher advice blog for Education Week Teacher and has a popular resource-sharing blog.
Valerie Strauss, Reporter| December 28, 2018
NPR (American Public Media)--Why Millions Of Kids Can't Read, And What Better Teaching Can Do About It
Jack Silva didn't know anything about how children learn to read. What he did know is that a lot of students in his district were struggling.
Silva is the chief academic officer Bethlehem, Pa., public schools. In 2015, only 56 percent of third graders were scoring proficient on the state reading test. That year, he set out to do something about that.
Emily Hanford| January 2, 20196:00 AM ET