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NJ Spotlight--This Year’s Budget Blunder: Projected $527M Shortfall
Paying off Homestead tax-relief credits next fiscal year, tapping Clean Energy Fund cited as ways administration plans on finding revenue to close expected gap
Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is once again scrambling to close a projected budget shortfall in the final weeks of the state’s fiscal year, this time a $527 million gap that will be fixed in part by shifting the pain to municipal governments.
The new budget problem is just the latest for the Christie administration. Five of the seven state spending plans that have been produced by the Republican governor since he took office in 2010 are now coming up short of earlier projections to some degree. That requires last-minute adjustments to stay in line with the state constitution, which forbids running a deficit.
John Reitmeyer | May 17, 2017
Education Week--How Trump's Altered the Landscape for Education Advocates
Education advocates in Washington might not always be on the same page when it comes to policy, but there’s at least one thing the vast majority agree on: The Trump administration—buttressed by a Republican Congress—is unlike anything they’ve ever had to contend with before.
In particular, groups that lobby Congress and the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of public school educators, as well as those representing civil rights issues and advocating for education funding, say that they are fighting what feels like a multifront war against vouchers, dramatic budget cuts, and what some describe as a general antipathy toward public schools and disadvantaged children.
“Being an advocate for public education gives me job security,” joked Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. “There’s plenty to engage on.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/05/17/how-trumps-altered-the-landscape-for-education.html
By Alyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa|May 12, 2017
Education Week--Can Teacher Residencies Help With Shortages?
Scholars at AERA take up the topic
There are two ways to prevent a teacher shortage in American schools: Widen the pipeline into the profession, or plug the leaky bucket of young teachers leaving the field.
At the American Educational Research Association meeting here last month, academic researchers debated ways to use comprehensive teacher residencies to both recruit and retain teachers.
Only about 50 programs nationwide use comprehensive teacher residencies, in which universities partner with local school districts to provide long-term student-teaching in exchange for teachers agreeing to work in the district for a period of time. Each of those residencies only produces from five to 100 new teachers a year—not enough to fill gaps in teacher pools nationwide.
But Roneeta Guha, a researcher with the Learning Policy Institute, and her colleagues found residencies were more likely to produce new teachers from minority backgrounds; 45 percent of residency teachers nationwide in 2015-16 were teachers of color, compared with only 19 percent of new teachers overall.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/05/10/can-teacher-residencies-help-with-shortages.html
Sarah D. Sparks|May 9, 2017
