The White House threatened Wednesday to veto a Republican bill to overhaul the No Child Left Behind law, calling the effort “a significant step backwards.” House Republican leadership was working Thursday evening to figure out whether there are enough votes to pass their proposed rewrite of No Child Left Behind, several GOP aides and lawmakers said. The House is scheduled for a final vote on Friday.

According to many teachers, experts and advocates of the Common Core, traditional curriculum sources haven’t been meeting the demands of the new set of math and English standards that have been rolled out in more than 40 states in the past few years. More and more teachers are scrapping off-the-shelf lessons and writing new curriculum materials themselves. The Hechinger Report

Read Entire Post

Congress is working toward a long-overdue rewrite of the high-profile and often controversial federal K-12 education law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Here’s what to keep in mind as the House takes up floor debate on a mostly GOP version Wednesday and as Senate committee leaders work toward crafting a bipartisan proposal. The Christian Science Monitor

While you’re reading that, be sure to check out this column in The Hechinger Report from Robert Rothman, senior fellow at the Alliance, in which he discusses how the pending rewrite of NCLB should be used to help schools and not punish those who benefit most from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)

Bills to repeal the Common Core have been introduced in 19 states so far this year, down slightly from the 22 states that considered such a step last year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. So far, they’ve fared poorly. Politico

Read Entire Post

This guest blog post comes from Helen Lazzaro, a Consultant for the  Flipped Learning Network. This blog appears as part of the Alliance’s Digital Learning Day Blog Series. Digital Learning Day 2015 takes place March 13.

On Digital Learning Day, Friday, March 13, 2015, experienced flipped learning educators in twelve countries will open their classroom doors to showcase active engaged learning in student-centered learning environments. You are invited to attend one of these events! (Some sites are hosting on other dates).

Experience flipped educators in 36 classrooms (representing 12 countries and 15 U.S. states) are opening their classroom doors on Digital Learning Day or during the week so other teachers, administrators, students, parents and the press can experience a flipped classroom first hand. To sign-up to attend a hosting school near you, click here.

Read Entire Post

A team made up of participants from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, the University of California in San Diego and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid, Spain have developed an interactive Web site that tells the story of the Common Core debate as it plays out over Twitter. THE Journal

The Maine Department of Education will suspend the A-F school grading system this year because students are taking a new assessment test and the state will not have enough data to measure their progress, education officials said Monday. Portland Press Herald

In a few short years, technology has become a major component of K-12 education. Some are asking whether we should be rethinking not just how kids learn, but what they learn, and what skills will be needed in a rapidly changing world. Terri Schwartzbeck, senior digital outreach associate at the Alliance and others discuss exploring the promise and peril of technology and education. The Kojo Nnamdi Show

Read Entire Post

This guest blog was written by EducationSuperHighway, an organization focused on upgrading the Internet infrastructure in K–12 public schools.This blog appears as part of the Alliance’s Digital Learning Day Blog Series. Digital Learning Day 2015 takes place March 13.

Digital learning in the classroom is only possible if schools have robust, high-speed broadband first. In order to make this happen, many school districts will need to plan for a network upgrade project. As with all district-wide initiatives, superintendents and district leaders play a critical role in ensuring the success of network upgrades. With this in mind, EducationSuperHighway created Network Essentials for Superintendents, a guide to help district leaders accomplish successful network upgrades.

Read Entire Post

As the House of Representatives prepared to take up a Republican proposal for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Congress and the White House on Monday inched toward a confrontation over the federal role in education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan blasted House Republicans’ efforts to rewrite the law, saying that the bill — which is expected to pass easily along party lines — would be “devastating” for minority children in the nation’s poorest schools and school districts.

The D.C. Public School District has seen student proficiency levels jump in math and reading in several schools in recent years. Part of their success has hinged on the way teachers are using blended learning in the classroom. eSchoolNews

Suspension rates dropped for many of the nation’s school districts — including some in the Washington region — but U.S. students still lost about 18 million days of instruction to out-of-school punishments in the 2011-2012 school year, according to research released Monday. The Washington Post

Read Entire Post

First Lady Michelle Obama on Friday called education the “single most important” civil rights issue facing the country and pleaded with young people to make going to school a priority, even if all they have is a “bad school.” The Associated Press

A new report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA  examines the discipline gap in public schools, highlighting the individual states and districts with the most egregious discipline records, and estimates 18 million days of lost instruction in just one year.

Many Americans are confused about the Common Core, according to a new poll that finds widespread misperceptions what curriculum the standards actually cover in public schools. The Washington Post

Read Entire Post

The following guest blog was written by Angelica Venegas, a graduating senior enrolled in a Linked Learning pathway at Millikan High School in Long Beach, California.

I wasn’t always that great of a student. Looking at the number of colleges I’ve applied to and the many extracurricular activities I’m involved in as a senior at Millikan High School in Long Beach, CA might make someone think otherwise. I’m happy to be a part of Millikan’s Linked Learning PEACE Academy. But flashback to middle school, and my story’s a little different.

Socially those years were great, but I could have done better academically. Lucky for me I was smart and had AVID to keep me on track. AVID, which stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination, is a school-based program that helps students prepare for college.  When 8th grade happened—it was just terrible. I fell under peer pressure and got kicked out of my middle school three months before promoting on to high school. But then came Millikan and the PEACE Linked Learning Academy.

Read Entire Post

The ‘Deeper Learning Digest’ is a bi-weekly roundup of articles, blog posts, and other content around deeper learning. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed to stay up-to-date on all deeper learning news. Please be sure to follow @deeperlearning on Twitter for more on deeper learning.

In a webinar on February 18, Robert Rothman, senior fellow at the Alliance, and Chip Slaven, counsel to the president and senior advocacy advisor at the Alliance, were joined by Chris Kingsley, associate director for local policy and advocacy for Data Quality Campaign to discuss how learning data can improve education by offering students a more personalized student-centric approach to learning. The webinar focused on a recent report authored by Rothman titled Data Dashboards: Accounting for What Matters.

In the latest entry in the Alliance’s “Core of the Matter” blog series, Lillian Pace, senior director of national policy at KnowledgeWorks, discusses how the Common Core State Standards have “opened the gate” to personalized learning in K-12 classrooms, benefitting all students but being especially important for those who previously struggled to engage in learning. Pace writes: “These classrooms are busy, noisy, and at first glance, distracting. But the closer you look, the more you realize that the noise and activity are signs that every student is engaged in his or her learning journey.”               

Read Entire Post

The House is set to clear a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act next week. A new schedule laid out Thursday afternoon would send the Republican-backed bill, to the floor for debate Wednesday and Thursday, with a final vote scheduled for Friday morning, but an ongoing debate over testing could derail the process.

One of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s significant accomplishments is the improvement in the high school graduation rate. It now stands at almost 70 percent, up from 58 percent when he was first elected in 2011. The mayor’s pitch for re-election includes a promise to raise the rate even further to 85 percent, which would put the city on par with the statewide rate of 86 percent. Catalyst Chicago

Troubling disparity between students of color and their peers has been marked by lower test scores and higher dropout rates for African-American, Latino and low-income students, and students who are still learning English. But some educators in California are convinced that the Common Core State Standards are helping to narrow that achievement gap. EdSource

Read Entire Post