May 2, 2016
By: Cory Turner
Source: npr.org The Kansas Supreme Court gave state lawmakers an ultimatum: Make school funding more equitable by June 30, or it will consider shutting down the state’s public schools. Since then, things have gotten ugly. Lawmakers followed up with a plan — to make it easier to impeach Supreme Court judges who […]
May 2, 2016
By: Meredith Kolodner
Source: hechingerreport.org Richard was one of the brightest kids in his high school class. His parents figured college was the next step, but that dream was nearly cut short in his first semester. Miscommunication with a professor resulted in an argument over handing in a paper he wasn’t finished with. Richard stormed […]
May 2, 2016
By: Ross Wiener
Source: edweek.org When President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act this past December, he called it a “Christmas miracle”—the happy ending to a serious bipartisan effort to reframe federal education policy. Many observers echoed the president’s optimism by heralding ESSA’s passage as the dawn of a new era and pinning their […]
May 2, 2016
By: Christina Samuels
Source: blogs.edweek.org The math and reading scores of 12th grade students with disabilities on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were stable in 2015—but those scores are still significantly below the scores of students who do not have disabilities. In math, 6 percent of high school seniors with disabilities scored at or above […]
April 28, 2016
By: Christina A. Samuels
Source: edweek.org While intense political pressure has prompted several states to move away from shared tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards, a set of aligned assessments for students with severe cognitive disabilities has managed to maintain support. For the current school year, 2015-16, 27 states and the District of Columbia […]
April 28, 2016
By: Grace Tatter
Source: chalkbeat.org The Tennessee Department of Education has terminated its contract with the developer of the state’s new standardized test and suspended testing for students in grades 3-8 this school year due to the company’s inability to deliver testing materials, Education Commissioner Candice McQueen announced Wednesday. However, TNReady testing will continue as planned […]
April 28, 2016
By: Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Source: abqjournal.com ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — One of the best spots at my kids’ middle school was the social worker’s office, a place filled with games and toys and lots and lots of snacks. Sometimes, the social worker told me, the easiest way to get troubled children to open up was to […]
April 28, 2016
By: Emma Brown
Source: washingtonpost.com Tennessee officials announced Wednesday that they are suspending standardized testing for elementary and middle school students for the remainder of the spring, saying that the state’s testing vendor has repeatedly failed to deliver the exams as promised. High school students will continue with testing, since the vendor did ship exams to all of […]
April 28, 2016
By: Michelle Pacansky-Brock
Source: edsurge.com “Wow. I always thought my online instructors were computers.” An online student shared this comment with his instructor after receiving an email from her that included feedback on an assignment. This story, shared with me by the student’s instructor several years ago, resonates with me on an emotional level each […]
April 28, 2016
By: Christina Samuels
Source: blogs.edweek.org I recently dug into a treasure trove of data maintained by the U.S. Department of Education’s office of special education programs (OSEP) to find out the answer to a simple question: What are the recent trends in special education enrollment? What I found is that, after years of declining numbers, […]