Current News

The Conrad Foundation has announced its Spirit of Innovation Challenge, which invites high school students and their coaches to work as a team and develop innovative products and services to help solve global and local problems while supporting global sustainability.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that cheating was rampant across 44 Atlanta schools before the state stepped in, and unless state oversight is more consistent, even in other states, experts say that the integrity of standardized tests will be called into question. The investigation says that cheating scandals are inevitable if there is poor oversight, and this problem could undermine national education policy built on test scores, which states and local districts hope to use as part of school and teacher evaluations.

For the first time this year, Oregon's school districts must set goals in "achievement compacts" as part of Gov. John Kitzhaber's plan to bolster education. Oregon Chief Education Officer Rudy Crew has given 69 of the state's school districts until Oct. 15 to rewrite their goals to boost high school graduation rates and third grade reading and math scores by at least one percentage point this school year.

The Kentucky Department of Education plans to release new accountability data in October, which will simplify accountability by assigning each district and school a score based on five main data sets. Achievement gaps, graduation rates, test scores, growth, and new college-and-career ready standards will be used to generate the scores, which will determine whether a district or school is "distinguished," "proficient," or "needs improvement."

During his State of Education address, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett praised the new teacher evaluation models and said he hoped to expand the state's accountability system to all districts. All school districts are using new teacher evaluations this year based on the state's general framework, and Bennett indicated that the feedback from the evaluations will help identify the best teacher preparation programs.

The Connecticut Educator Preparation Advisory Council will develop policy recommendations and propose regulatory revisions to increase teacher and school leader preparation at the behest of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. The council, co-chaired by State Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor and Board of Regents for Higher Education Executive Vice President Michael Meotti, must examine educator training and its alignment with school and district needs and responsiveness to feedback; establish recruitment best practices and standards for candidate acceptance into these programs; and develop metrics for preparation program performance linked in part to graduate performance in the years following entry into the education field.

California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has urged more schools to take part in the Technology Readiness Tool survey to gauge the readiness of new online assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards. "We know our schools already face enormous day-to-day challenges -- but we also need to understand what issues they face as we move to online testing over the next few years. We know this effort will take time, energy and resources -- all of which are in short supply. That's why we need the broadest participation possible in this survey, so that we provide as much assistance as possible to schools as they make the transition to 21st-century testing," he says.

All Virginia students in the 2017-18 school year will be expected to meet a 73 percent passing rate on math tests under a plan aimed at narrowing achievement gaps among students of all backgrounds. Schools would be required to reduce achievement gaps on standards-of-learning exams between different student groups by 50 percent. Students must meet or exceed a minimum pass rate every year.

Montana will receive about $2 million in federal grant money to improve K-12 math and science programs. The money will be used to train teachers on how to better teach math and science and to better prepare students for the workforce after graduation. Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau says, "Partnership between Bozeman Public schools and Montana State University, they will develop a training system, they'll bring teachers in from the system who will become experts in math and then they will go out regionally and train other teachers across the state, and so pretty soon you'll have this big pool of teachers that are ready to do a lot of training back onsite at their own school systems."

According to The Nation's Report Card from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), about 25 percent of the 50,000 students who participated in the United States' first national computer-based writing test scored a "proficient" or "advanced" score on the test. While NAEP has conducted writing assessments in the past, this is the first year the test was computer-based, according to officials from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).