EduClips: AZ Teachers May Return to Class Thursday; LAUSD Selects Beutner as Superintendent — and More Must-Reads From America’s 15 Biggest School Districts

EduClips is a roundup of the day’s top education headlines from America’s largest school districts, where more than 4 million students across eight states attend class every day. Read previous EduClips installments here. Get the day’s top school and policy news delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for the TopSheet Education Newsletter.

Top Story

AZ TEACHERS’ STRIKE — Arizona teachers will return to class Thursday if the Legislature passes the budget by then, organizers have announced, marking the end to the largest walkout in modern American history.

At a Tuesday evening news conference at the capitol, the leaders of the Arizona Educators United group and Arizona Education Association, the state’s teachers union, credited the teachers’ movement for the additional education funding lawmakers are expected to approve.

But they also acknowledged that all of their funding demands haven’t been met and vowed to continue the unprecedented wave of teacher activism beyond this legislative session. The organizers of both groups said the realization that state lawmakers were unlikely to budge on addressing more of their funding demands outweighed stretching the walkout beyond Wednesday. (Read at USA Today)

National News

SEGREGATION — Why Are New York’s Schools Segregated? It’s Not as Simple as Housing (Read at The New York Times)

DEVOS — The nation’s top teachers met with Betsy DeVos, and not all of them were thrilled with what she had to say (Read at The Washington Post)

PERSONALIZED LEARNING — Sketchbooks. Makerspaces. Student Startups. Inside America’s Largest Personalized Learning Experiment, How One Rhode Island ‘Lighthouse Laboratory’ Is Reimagining School (Read at The74Million.org)

TEACHER STRIKES — What’s driving the latest wave of teacher strikes? Pension problems, some say (Read at PBS NewsHour)

SCHOOL SAFETY — In an Attempt to Counter Parkland Activists, Student Second-Amendment Enthusiasts to Stage Walkout in Support of Gun Rights (Read at The74Million.org)

CHARTERS — Success Academy Chairman, Daniel Loeb, Is Stepping Down (Read at The New York Times)

District and State News

CALIFORNIA — Austin Beutner is named superintendent as board members choose strong leadership to tackle LAUSD’s deep academic and fiscal challenges (Read at LA School Report)

FLORIDA — State Supreme Court accepts 2009 school funding case (Read at the Tampa Bay Times)

GEORGIA — Gwinnett school board race may make history by electing a non-white member (Read at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

NEVADA — Arbitrator Sides With Teachers in Clark County Pay Dispute (Read at U.S. News and World Report)

CALIFORNIA — CA governor’s race becomes proxy fight over education reform (Read at The Hill)

NEW YORK — Mayor de Blasio shelling out $5M to fight sexual harassment in city schools (Read at the New York Daily News)

TEXAS — Mayor Turner pitches HISD partnership plan TEA says is not allowed (Read at Chron)

PENNSYLVANIA — Philadelphia’s Housing Authority Bought a High School: What Does That Mean for One of the City’s Poorest Neighborhoods? (Read at The Root)

ILLINOIS — Opinion: School funding reform crucial for Illinois (Read at the Northwest Herald)

NEW YORK — ‘You’re going to see a lot of me’: Carranza promises to be a presence among Albany lawmakers (Read at Chalkbeat)

NEVADA — CCSD wants marijuana money to help pay for teacher raises (Read at the Las Vegas Sun)

Think Pieces

VALUE-ADDED — Disadvantaged Kids Don’t Have Equal Access to Great Teachers. Research Suggests That Hurts Their Learning (Read at The74Million.org)

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION — Affirmative action in education looks an awful lot like bigotry — especially to Asian-Americans (Read at The Hill)

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT — Contributing to a ‘More Perfect Union’: Mathematica Study of Civic Engagement of Students at Democracy Prep Is Encouraging but Only a Beginning (Read at The74Million.org)

MUSEUMS — Museums Are Dabbling in Teacher Training, and the Results Are Promising (Read at Education Week)

YOUNG ASTRONAUTS — Indiana Teacher Reviving Young Astronauts Program (Read at U.S. News and World Report)

Quote of the Day

“We want kids to own things, not just test well. ‘Can they apply it?’ is more important than ‘Can they regurgitate it?’ ” —Paula Dillon, assistant superintendent at Barrington Public Schools, on the district’s commitment to personalized learning. (Read at The74Million.org)

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