NY Times--New York Joins Movement to Abandon Use of Student Tests in Teacher Evaluations
Four years ago, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo pushed through a plan to put New York at the forefront of a national movement to reshape American public education: He vowed that half of a teacher’s rating would be determined by student results on standardized exams.
But his initiative met with immediate resistance from teachers’ unions and parents, especially those in New York’s wealthy suburbs and progressive urban pockets.
They protested on the basis it would place undue stress on teachers and children, whose test scores are used for high-stakes admissions decisions and academic tracking.
As a result, with Mr. Cuomo’s assent, the evaluation system was suspended only months after it had been adopted. Now, in a final capitulation to a years long backlash, Mr. Cuomo is set to sign a bill the Legislature just passed that essentially guts the testing component.
Eliza Shapiro| Feb. 1, 2019
Education Week--Charter Debates Could Be Coming to State Legislatures
State policy debate now at 'granular level'
While funding, teacher pay and shortages, and school safety are prime K-12 issues in the state legislative sessions that get underway this month, charter schools are also likely to be hot topics on lawmakers' agendas.
Among the potential flash points: how to make sure funding for charter schools is equitable and how to hold online charter schools accountable.
Last year, 86 bills concerning charters were enacted in 27 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Marva Hinton| January 23, 2019
The Hechinger Report--How do schools train for a workplace that doesn’t exist yet?
A reader asks: Not knowing what tasks will be automated or what future jobs will look like, how should schools prepare students now?
We’ve all heard the dire predictions about the coming robot apocalypse. Automation threatens 47 percent of jobs. As many as 800 million people worldwide could be displaced and need to find new jobs by 2030. Middle-class families will be hit the hardest.
Chris Burns has heard these sorts of predictions, too. He’s also seen just how fast changes are happening in his own industry, information technology. Burns works for a business near Cincinnati that sells cloud computing and other technology services, and he says there is a big shortage of skilled IT employees both nationally and in his metro area. His company has started working with local high schools to introduce students and teachers to tech tools and career paths, but he wonders whether it’s enough and what sorts of approaches he ought to be taking given the uncertainty around what jobs will look like in the future.
https://hechingerreport.org/how-do-schools-train-for-a-workplace-that-doesnt-exist-yet/
Caroline Preston| January 31, 2019