Education News from Washington Post

Community colleges have greatly evolved in the past two decades, adopting many hallmarks of traditional colleges but, often, at a much lower price. Many schools now offer a wide variety of clubs, sports and study abroad programs. Their campuses feature coffee shops, recreation complexes and posh lounges, spaces that encourage students to hang out instead of hopping back in their cars or catching the bus after class.

The District has made great strides in pushing public and charter school students to apply to college and then enroll, but still, too few eventually earn a degree.

Even some of the city’s valedictorians and highest performing students struggle in college, my colleague Emma Brown reported in an eye-opening article last weekend. Many of the students she interviewed said they felt inadequately prepared, especially compared to classmates who attended private prep schools or top public schools in the suburbs.

If it's sometimes hard to understand the world of school reform, it's no wonder, given that things don't always mean what their names or titles suggest. Here by way of explanation is a "reformy-to-English" glossary by Karen McKeegan Fraid, a public school parent and volunteer in Chicago. You can follow her on Twitter @KarenMFraid. The following is an edited version of her glossary, which you can find here, Part 1 and Part 2, on her That Way Madness blog.

A workforce lacking robust a humanities and social science education could be just as detrimental to the country’s future economic competitiveness as one deficient in science and technological expertise, according to an American Academy of Arts and Sciences report released Wednesday.

States that are implementing the Common Core academic standards and new standardized tests in public schools can have an additional year before they have to use those student test scores to decide pay and job security for teachers, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan bowed to (some) reason Tuesday and announced that he was giving states some flexibility in regard to when they had to use student scores from new Common Core-aligned standardized tests to evaluate teachers.

To help schools meet the new requirement to evaluate teachers based on student achievement, Virginia officials created a method for calculating how much students learned in a year. By extension, they believe that the same method can show how well teachers are doing their jobs.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson hosted dozens of the city’s top graduating seniors at a luncheon Tuesday, inaugurating what she hopes will become an annual tradition of honoring outstanding students as they head off to college.

In their blue caps and gowns, Sia Kanu and Zac Winland blended in with the rows of graduating Lee High School students Monday. But unlike the hundreds of other seniors in their Fairfax County class, the two 19-year-olds represented a tiny sliver of the county’s student population: Both are homeless and living apart from their families, fending for themselves while trying to overcome harrowing pasts.

The National Council on Teacher Quality, an organization that is funded by organizations that promote a corporate-influenced school reform agenda, just issued ratings of teacher preparation programs that is getting a lot of attention in the ed world. The ratings are seriously flawed. Explaining how in this post is teacher education expert Linda Darling-Hammond, chair of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University.

APPR

Here's a new post from award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York about the state's controversial new educator evaluation system. Burris has for more than a year chronicled on this blog (she calls it Star Wars here, and other things here and here and here, for example) the implementation of the system, which ignores research by using student standardized test scores to assess teachers and which has already started to negatively impact young people.

Five Fairfax County schools have qualified for three-year accreditation waivers from the Virginia Department of Education for high-performance on state mandated exams.

Virginia Superintendent for Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright announced in a statement Tuesday that Haycock, Westbriar and Wolftrap elementary schools; Rachel Carson Middle School and the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology qualified for the waivers. All five schools earned pass rates of 95 percent or above on the four Standards of Learning tests for the past two school years.

Most D.C. schools will let out for summer break at the end of this week, but debate over the city’s education policies is just beginning.

D.C. Council Member David Catania, who has proposed wide-ranging legislation to overhaul city schools, has scheduled five hearings during the first two weeks of July.

The National Council On Teacher Quality released a first-of-its-kind national review of teacher preparation programs Tuesday. The report includes an evaluation of all or part of the teacher preparation programs at 29 Virginia universities.

There's a lot being said and written about the Common Core State Standards these days, not all of it accurate. Here's a smart piece about the initiative by the editors of Rethinking Schools, a nonprofit organization that publishes a magazine of the same name that balances classroom practice and educational theory, while also addressing key policy issues. Writers include teachers, parents and researchers, You can see who is on the editorial board here.

David Catania, the chairman of the D.C. Council's Education Committee, has introduced seven school reform bills that, according to this Post story, could reshape the city's public education system. Among other things, it calls for increasing funding for poor students, giving principals more power, altering the school lottery system, and ending social promotion.

The vast majority of the 1,430 education programs that prepare the nation’s K-12 teachers are mediocre, according to a first-ever ranking that immediately touched off a firestorm.

Released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based advocacy group, the rankings are part of a $5 million project funded by major U.S. foundations. Education secretaries in 21 states have endorsed the report, but some universities and education experts quickly assailed the review as incomplete and inaccurate.

Three new members were appointed to the Prince George’s County Board of Education on Monday, completing the expansion of the board that County Executive Rushern L. Baker III pushed through this year.

Under the new structure, the formerly all-elected school board now holds three spots — including the chairmanship — for the county executive’s handpicked members and another spot for a county council appointee.

Three new members were appointed to the Prince George’s County Board of Education on Monday, completing the expansion of the board that County Executive Rushern L. Baker III pushed through this year.

Under the new structure, the formerly all-elected school board now holds three spots — including the chairmanship and vice-chairmanship — for the county executive’s handpicked members and another spot for a county council appointee.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a public liberal arts school facing an abrupt leadership transition after a sharp enrollment decline, named a veteran higher education administrator from Canada as its interim president Monday.