EduClips: Teacher Walkouts Continue in OK, KY; LAUSD Board to Play More Direct Role in Setting Rules for Charters — 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
NAEP TEST — When results from the nation’s most highly regarded test of academic progress are released next week in Washington, D.C., they won’t include evidence from some states indicating that students performed worse than their peers — not as a result of an academic deficiency but because they had less experience using a computer.
Significant differences between students who took this year’s test on tablets and a small group who continued to take it on paper were found in about 1 out of every ten administrations of this year’s test, according to sources who discussed the results with officials from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which supervises the testing. Every other year, the test, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), is given to fourth and eighth graders in reading and math in all 50 states; it was conducted electronically this year for the first time.
In their conversations with NCES officials, some state education leaders have expressed concern that high levels of poverty — often associated with less access to computers — and perhaps little to no history of online testing may have hurt students’ results. Some worried that NCES would not provide data detailing the effects of online testing, which would allow for apples-to-apples comparisons between states. (Read at The74Million.org)
National News
TEACHER STRIKES — Oklahoma Teachers Continue Walkout (Read at Wall Street Journal)
NATIONAL — Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Puerto Rico Apply for ESSA Innovative Testing Pilot (Read at Politics K-12)
TEACHER STRIKES — On Social Media, Striking Teachers Are Organizing for Themselves (Read at The74Million.org)
District and State News
CALIFORNIA — LAUSD board to play more direct role in setting rules for charter schools — and charter leaders are thrilled (Read at KPCC)
PUERTO RICO — Puerto Rico teachers union seeks to stop charter schools (Read at ABC News)
NEW YORK — Here’s how Richard Carranza handled Houston’s special education crisis and what it could mean for New York City (Read at Chalkbeat)
ILLINOIS — Culture Shock: Teachers Call Noble Charters ‘Dehumanizing’ (Read at NPR Illinois)
NEW YORK — DOE took illegal steps to fire tenured teacher: judge (Read at New York Post)
FLORIDA — Can Florida teachers walk out too? It’s not a good idea, unions say (Read at Tampa Bay Online)
NEVADA — Clark County teachers win arbitration over 2017-18 contract (Read at Las Vegas Review-Journal)
TEXAS — Texas can do better than suspend its youngest students [Editorial] (Read at Houston Chronicle)
PUERTO RICO — Charter Schools and Vouchers With ‘A Uniquely Puerto Rican’ Flavor Headed to Hurricane-Ravaged Island, But Union Vows to Fight Changes (Read at The 74)
VIRGINIA — Hackers tried to change grades at Virginia high school, police say (Read at The Washington Post)
CALIFORNIA — California districts to take part in groundbreaking school safety study (Read at EdSource)
NEVADA — Nevada schools experience another shakeup with Jessup departure (Read at Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Think Pieces
TEACHER PAY — As teachers across the country demand higher pay, here’s how much salaries have stalled — and why it matters for kids (Read at Chalkbeat)
DACA — Study: DACA Led More to Go to College (Read at Inside Higher Ed)
TEACHER STRIKES — The Larger Concerns Behind the Teachers’ Strikes (Read at The Atlantic)
CLASSROOM DESIGN — Using creative classroom design to promote instructional innovation (Read at Hechinger Report)
TEACHER STRIKES — Do Weak Labor Laws Actually Spur More Teacher Strikes? (Read at Governing)
Quote of the Day
“Is there a difference at the state level because we have more low-income kids or less experience with computers? The answer is, of course.” — Louisiana State Superintendent of Education John White on the NAEP test being given electronically for the first time. Sources say that 1 out 10 scores may have been adversely affected by the switch, hurting states with more poverty and less access to technology. (Read at The74Million.org)
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