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MarylandCAN News Roundup: Top 10 Education News Stories of the Week
MarylandCAN Top 10 Education News Stories
1. Lowery faces tough task as education leader
June 8, 2012 | Curtis Valentine, Gazette.Net
Dr. Lillian Lowery, Maryland’s new state superintendent of schools, proved herself a force to be reckoned with in Delaware, where she led the state to receive the first federal Race to the Top grant. We know great schools change everything — from the economy, to our communities, to a child’s future. But to have great schools, we need great leaders.
Find out what's happening in Silver Springwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Find out what's happening in Silver Springwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
June 13, 2012 | Ovetta Wiggins, The Washington Post
It's not being called a takeover.
But Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III made it clear Wednesday morning as he unveiled his education agenda that the public school system will not continue to operate as usual.
“We are going to move beyond the traditional role of county executive,” said Baker, noting that he plans to take a more active role in the schools.
June 13, 2012 | Kelsey Sheehy, USNews Education
The nation's high school graduation rate climbed for the second straight year, spurred largely by significant gains among Latino students, according to a report released last week.
"Diplomas Count 2012," an annual report by Education Week, shows graduation rates among Latino students jumped 5.5 percentage points between 2008 and 2009. This improvement helped bump the national graduation rate up 1.7 points to 73 percent for the 2009 graduating class, the most recent data available.
4. Collaborating to solve the STEM teaching crisis
June 13, 2012 | Meghan Groome, Julia Rankin and Jennifer Wheary, The Huffington Post
For most K-12 students, the school year has just ended or is about to end. While the kids head out for vacation, a good number of their instructors are deciding whether or not they will return to teaching in the Fall. Teacher turnover is a costly national problem. It takes about $3 billion each year to replace K-12 teachers who leave, according to a conservative estimate by the Alliance for Excellent Education. In addition to the financial costs of having to replace teachers and retrain new ones, high teacher turnover is associated with lower student achievement.
5. Why parents shouldn't take a summer break from schools
June 13, 2012 | Meryl Ain, Ed. D., The Huffington Post
In her K-12 Parents and the Public blog in Education Week, Michele Molnar wrote this week about the importance of parents staying engaged in schools over the summer. I couldn't agree more.
She wrote about my friend, Myrdin Thompson of Louisville, Ky., who is the regional director for the central states of the National Family Engagement Alliance. Myrdin is quoted as saying that she recently contacted a school board member in her own school system to find out if her district would be applying for Race to the Top funding in the new district-grant competition.
6. City school board approves two new charters
June 13, 2012 | Erica Green, The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore school board approved applications this week to open the Creative City Public Charter School, an arts integration elementary school, and the Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys, a college preparatory program that starts in fourth grade.
The two schools were among four applications considered by the district in the last month. The school board rejected proposals for what would have been the district's first military academy and an all-girls elementary school.
7. Will Congress compound its error on ‘highly qualified’ teachers?
June 12, 2012 | Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
Back in late 2010, Congress approved legislation that defined “highly qualified teachers” as including students still in teacher training programs. Now, instead of admitting that the definition doesn’t make much sense, Congress is on the road to passing new legislation to keep that definition on the books (even though a federal appellate court has ruled that it violates the No Child Left Behind law).
This week, and possibly as early as today, a Senate subcommittee is taking up an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — known in its current form as No Child Left Behind — that deals with this issue.
8. Evidence persists of STEM achievement gap for girls
June 11, 2012 | Erik Robelen, Education Week
With the 40th anniversary of Title IX just days away, one key area where questions about gender equity persist is STEM education and the under-representation of women in those professions.
In researching this subject for a forthcoming EdWeek story, I discovered some evidence that a STEM achievement gap persists for girls at the K-12 level, especially in science. I also learned that what may be true for the United States is not necessarily so across the globe.
9. The ‘American dream’ is a myth: Joseph Stiglitz on ‘The price of inequality’
June 8, 2012 | Aarong Task, Yahoo Finance
Income inequality has become the subject of much debate in this country, in large part because of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
In his latest book, The Price of Inequality, Columbia Professor and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz examines the causes of income inequality and offers some remedies. In between, he reaches some startling conclusions, including that America is "no longer the land of opportunity" and "the 'American dream' is a myth."
10. County high schools look to mirror national focus on science, math
June 8, 2012 | Abby Brownback, Gazette.Net
Prince George’s County Public Schools will beef up the science, technology, engineering and math components of the 13 career-focused academies rolling out in its 22 traditional high schools over the next five years.
The focus on these STEM subjects — from architecture and design to military science — follows the national emphasis on subjects experts say will help the United States remain a world leader in technology, manufacturing and innovation.
