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Daily Headlines for August 30, 2013

Click here for Newswire, the latest weekly report on education news and commentary you won’t find anywhere else – spiced with a dash of irreverence – from the nation’s leading voice in school reform.

NATIONAL COVERAGE

Charter School Results Set High Bar for Public Schools
Huffington Post, August 29, 2013
KIPP Empower Academy hasn’t been around for very long but it has already made a name for itself.

Crushing school choice
Editorial, Washington Times, August 28, 2013
The White House has taken Louisiana’s poorest schoolchildren and crushed their hopes for a better future. Citing rules meant to end racism, the Justice Department last week asked a federal judge in New Orleans to slam shut the door on minority kids, ensuring they remain trapped in failing schools.

Education reform is strengthened at home
Column, Washington Post, August 29, 2013
Call me an ingrate. I complained last week that promotional materials for Saturday’s commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington didn’t mention education. At the event, a few individuals — the National Urban League’s Marc Morial and the American Federation of Teachers’ Randi Weingarten — did call attention to the need for quality schools. I remain unsatisfied. No one set a course that would lead the masses to that expressed goal.

Teacher-Training Schools Face Tougher Accreditation Standards
Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2013
Teacher preparation programs will have to raise admission standards and ensure graduates are boosting the achievement levels of elementary and high-school students to earn national accreditation, according to a revamp of the process adopted Thursday.

The High Turnover at Charter Schools
Letters, New York Times, August 30, 2013
Re “At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice” (front page, Aug. 27): Thank you for shedding light on the appalling turnover rate for teachers at many charter schools.

STATE COVERAGE

CALIFORNIA

Academic performance drops statewide, but L.A. Unified Improves
Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2013
L.A. Unified posts the second-highest gain in academic performance among California’s 10 largest school districts.

API scores: Only about half of LA Unified charters meeting state performance goals
California Public Radio, August 29, 2013
For decades, charter schools have been held out as one of the great hopes of public education — private institutions funded with taxpayer dollars, but free from some of the strictures that saddle traditional public schools.

STREAM Charter School, OCESD prepare for next steps
Mercury-Register, August 30, 2013
It was a long night Wednesday for the Oroville City Elementary School District board and dozens of citizens focused on a proposed new charter school, but in the end the school prevailed.

FLORIDA

Education reform at a crossroads in Florida
Editorial, Brandenton Herald, August 30, 2013
This week’s education summit should compel Gov. Rick Scott to provide resolute leadership on reforms else he fail the test that he himself wrote in asking dozens of legislators, superintendents, parents and business leaders to come up with recommendations.

Lawmaker files bill to stop Common Core
Herald Tribune, August 29, 2013
In the wake of conservative complaints that the nationwide “common core” standards could be the first step toward a federal takeover of schools, a Republican lawmaker has filed a bill meant to stop the initiative in Florida.

Manatee superintendent backs Rowlett charter plan
Herald Tribune, August 29, 2013
School Superintendent Rick Mills plans to recommend to the School Board an approval of the magnet school’s application to become a charter operation.

HAWAII

Kihei Charter rated low; student proficiency high
Maui Weekly, August 29, 2013
The Maui News – Although its students achieved high reading, math and science proficiency scores, Kihei Charter School’s low, 51 percent on-time graduation rate dropped it to the bottom 5 percent of schools statewide under the public schools’ new Strive HI Performance System.

INDIANA

Indiana leaders create panel to review school assessments following grade-changing scandal
Associated Press, August 29, 2013
A panel of teachers, principals and superintendents will be tasked with rewriting Indiana’s school grading system in the wake of a grade-changing scandal that benefited a Republican donor’s school, state leaders announced Thursday.

LOUISIANA

School voucher program in trouble again
Editorial, The Advertiser, August 30, 2013
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the school voucher program beginning in the 2014-2015 school year in parishes under desegregation orders. The movement of students can — and has, in some instances — upset the racial balance in schools, making them noncompliant with desegregation plans.

MICHIGAN

Bay City Academy charter school enrolls 470 students, opents new Farragut campus
Bay City Times, August 29, 2013
For 11-year-old Mackenna Rau, Bay City Academy is the right school. And she’s not alone.

Some schools sell themselves in silly, superficial ways
Column, Bridge Magazine, August 29, 2013
Back to school shopping in Michigan takes on a whole new meaning in this era of free market school choice.

MISSISSIPPI

Same on officials who won’t get in trenches, fight Common Core
Opinion, Clarion Ledger, August 30, 2013
In a recent Clarion-Ledger report on education, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves questioned the timing of the inquiry into Common Core standards by myself and my colleagues in the Mississippi Senate Conservative Coalition.

NEW JERSEY

Choice Schools
Editorial, The Record, August 30, 2013
GENERATIONS OF New Jersey children grew up attending the public school nearest their home. That’s just the way things were.

NEW YORK

Charter schools dreams undaunted
Queens Chronicle, August 29, 2013
With two applications rejected in recent years, one could forgive Carl Clay for being apprehensive about asking the state for a charter school that would be run by his Black Spectrum Theatre Company.

Common Core’s welcome wakeup call
Opinion, New York Daily News, August 30, 2013
This week, the plummeting test scores New York announced earlier in the month became real for thousands of families — including mine — when we received our children’s individual results online. In April, New York became the second state to test students according to the new, more rigorous Common Core standards that have been adopted by 45 states.

Pinnacle’s reopening as district school raises issue of whether students will be better off
Buffalo News, August 29, 2013
Pinnacle Charter School, shut down by the state last week, will reopen as a Buffalo public school, with district staff members who have been laid off getting the first chance at any jobs at the reconstituted school.

Protest over no busing as private schools open
Newsday, August 29, 2013
Many Long Island parents whose children enter private and parochial schools next week are protesting a lack of public-funded busing during the first days of class.

Success Academy parent’s secret tapes reveal attempt to push out special student
New York Daily News, August 30, 2013
The Upper West Side Success Academy charter school has touted itself for not trying to push out kids with special needs or behavior problems, but a parent has audio to the contrary.

NORTH CAROLINA

Graduation rates paint pictures of successes and struggles
WRAL, August 29, 2013
Seven years ago, fewer than half of the students enrolled in Lexington City Schools graduated within four years.

Stalled charter school losing students
WECT, August 29, 2013
Just days before classes are set to start, SEGS Academy, a new charter school in Columbus County, still doesn’t have the permits required to hold classes.

OHIO

The lack of overall grades in new state report cards poses a new challenge for high-performing charter schools and Cleveland’s Transformation Alliance
Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 29, 2013
A stack of signs advertising the Entrepeneurship Preparatory School (E-Prep) as “Rated Excellent!” sits in the school’s office. Once destined to be posted on lawns to attract potential students, they’re now destined for the trash.

PENNSYLVANIA

C’mon teachers. There’s some room to give
Column, Philadelphia Inquirer, August 30, 2013
SOME PEOPLE might stop speaking to me after this column appears. One of them may be my sister.

TENNESSEE

Dickson County Schools look to close gaps in minority education
The Tennessean, August 29, 2013
Director of Schools Dr. Danny Weeks reported at the school board’s monthly meeting last week that the Dickson County school system was one of 96 school districts out of 136 in the state that fell within the “In Need of Subgroup Improvement” status.

Supporters protest ‘hostility’ toward charter schools
The Tennessean, August 29, 2013
Nashville charter school supporters called in reinforcements from Washington, D.C., Thursday to help protest the hostility they claim Metro officials show toward charters.

TEXAS

State may revoke charter of closed Houston school
Houston Chronicle, August 30, 2013
After a series of financial problems, a small north Houston charter school shut down just before students were scheduled to return this month.

WISCONSIN

Local Democrats want voucher accountability
WXOW, August 30, 2013
La Crosse’s State Senator is one of the Democrat voices calling for more accountability to the newly extended voucher program.

WEST VIRGINIA

Helping Children At Risk of Failure
Editorial, Wheeling Intelligencer, August 30, 2013
Apparently the absence of some useless federal regulations makes some hearts grow fonder of them. No one should lament the demise of “No Child Left Behind,” the decade-old federal school improvement law, however.

ONLINE LEARNING

Baldwin County will expand Digital Renaissance to kindergarten
The Hunstville Times, August 30, 2013
The Baldwin County school board voted Thursday night to expand its Digital Renaissance program all the way down to kindergarten.

Michigan students to have many options for online learning this school year
Detroit Free Press, August 30, 2013
The school year that begins Tuesday for an estimated 1.5 million Michigan public school children will represent the most substantial expansion of online education in Michigan, giving students more choices than ever in deciding how they want to take their classes.

Virtual high school coming to CMS soon
Charlotte Observer, August 29, 2013
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will roll out a virtual high school as early as this year, Superintendent Heath Morrison told the school board this week.

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