EduClips: Fariña’s Legacy as NYC Schools Chief; The 2018 Education Policy Forecast — and More Must-Reads From America’s 10 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

2018 EDUCATION FORECAST— 2018 holds plenty of surprises for federal education policy, both in terms of President Donald Trump’s second year in office and the GOP-controlled Congress. Education Week takes a look at the forecast for school choice, the budget, ESSA, and the fate of hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers.” (Read at Education Week)

National News

PRIVATE SCHOOLS — Losing Students, Private Schools Try to Change (Read at Wall Street Journal)

GRADUATION — Sharp decline in high school graduation exams is testing the education system (Read at Washington Post)

BEST HIGH SCHOOLS — Best public high schools in every state (Read at USA Today)

ESSA — Betsy DeVos’ Team Gives ESSA Feedback to Indiana, Rhode Island (Read at Politics K-12)

District and State News

NEW YORK — ‘She lived by that’: Carmen Fariña’s school-by-school theory of change inspired awe, but also doubt (Read at Chalkbeat)

TEXAS — Texas Has Been Slashing School Funding For A Decade, And Property Taxes Are Rising As A Result (Read at HPPR)

NEVADA — School transgender policy gets people talking (Read at Las Vegas Sun)

TEXAS — TEA trust: A troubled state agency now faces a contracting scandal (Read at Houston Chronicle)

CALIFORNIA — Teacher training report: California earns a D+, below most states (Read at The Mercury News)

ILLINOIS — Illinois schools will get new focus on spending in 2018 (Read at Illinois News Network)

NEVADA — Parents irked with CCSD denial of online learning options (Read at Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Think Pieces

TEACHERS — Can putting the least-experienced teachers in the highest-risk schools ever result in success? (Read at The Hechinger Report)

CHARTERS — Tales from the Public School Crypt (Read at Wall Street Journal)

COLLEGE — Opinion: Why do so many Republicans hate college? (Read at the Washington Post)

PTA — Analysis: PTA Purchasing Power Leaves Low-Income Schools Even Further Behind (Read at The74million.org)

TAX BILL — The Tax Bill Is No Gift for Kids (Read at U.S. News & World Report)

Quote of the Day

“Like all of us, I think her strength is also her weakness. She knew an awful lot of principals and visited an awful lot of schools. But sometimes you need to step back and look at the whole picture.”— Clara Hemphill, director of education policy and Insideschools at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, on departing NYC School Chancellor Carmen Fariña. (Read at Chalkbeat)

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