Current News

Massachusetts is one of 22 states preparing to roll out the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test, an online test aligned with the Common Core State Standards that will replace standardized tests in English language arts and math in the 2014-15 school year.

The Hawaii State Department of Education recently handed out a total of $1 million in Strive HI awards to 32 schools, which each received between $12,500 to $100,000. The awards -- which come from the state's Race to the Top federal grant -- recognize schools that have demonstrated significant academic progress for two consecutive years.

At a March 4 meeting of the Rotary Club of Northern Guam, Guam Department of Education Superintendent Jon Fernandez discussed his plans to establish an education foundation that would offset a shortage in local government funding by allowing businesses and individuals to make donations to the school system.

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has announced a new planning tool and guidance for schools and districts that will help them prepare for new assessments in the 2014-2015 school year.

The Wallace Foundation's has released a new 2013 report titled: Districts Matter: Cultivating the Principals Urban Schools Need. According to the report, great principals are key to turning around urban schools and effective school leadership should be cultivated by school districts.

Deborah Delisle, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, is focusing her attention on altering the way the department interacts with states. "We are designing a very robust technical assistance program to support states," she says.

The Grad Nation campaign set a goal in 2010 that by 2020, the high school graduation rate would be 90 percent. The coalition's latest report shows that with a four-year graduation rate of 78.2 percent in 2010, the pace of improvement is picking up, and some states could meet that goal sooner if the progress continues.

Vermont Education Secretary Armando Vilaseca says Vermont will begin using the Smarter Balance computer-based assessment by the spring of 2015, abandoning the standardized, paper-based NECAPS test. The NECAPS test measures math, reading, and writing skills and tests students using the same set of questions.

Oklahoma Superintendent Janet Barresi has introduced proposed changes to the A-F school grading system. Under the proposed changes, schools would receive credit for each advanced course a student takes, the school climate survey would be scrapped, and districts would have more time to verify data they send to the state.

According to the Maine Department of Education, the state's four-year graduation rate rose for the third consecutive year, climbing to 85.34 percent in the 2011-12 school year. The rate has climbed almost 5 percent since 2009 and edged up about 1.5 percent over the past year. The graduation rate was 91.5 percent for publicly funded private schools.