The results of this week’s midterm elections mean changes for federal education policy. But just how big will these changes be?

Today’s Federal Flash covers shifts in the House and Senate, as well as what a change in leadership could mean for an array of concerning polices coming from the Department of Education.

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What is it about stories that make them such a powerful tool of communication? How can educators weave storytelling into instruction to help students make deeper and more meaningful connections to academic content?

Today’s Digest explores how storytelling can be used to promote deeper learning in the classroom. It also paints a picture of competency-based learning across the country, and offers some advice for kick-starting personalized learning in your school or district.

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Last month, as I attended the EdSurge Fusion 2018 conference, I immersed myself in the idea of education transformation. Sitting in that hotel ballroom, I was surrounded by the most cutting-edge educators—those district leaders, principals, and teachers who are leading the way to provide students with genuine twenty-first-century learning experiences.

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Recently, Mike Petrilli wrote about the Alliance for Excellent Education’s analysis of state ESSA plans in which we found that twelve states do not ensure subgroups are universally included in school ratings. While acknowledging that this could be an issue, Mike, with an assist from Aaron Churchill, used Ohio data to make the case that we were (mostly) crying wolf: Including subgroups in school ratings doesn’t matter because subgroup performance is almost always reflected in schoolwide averages, at least when using value-added measures. Specifically, Mike and Aaron showed how school-level growth data for “all students” in Ohio tends to be strongly correlated with school-level growth data for “Black” and “low-income” students. Very few schools would have received both an “A” or “B” grade for “all students” growth and a “D” or ”F” for the specific subgroup’s growth. Mike concluded that we “should stop fretting about this particular aspect of state accountability systems” and move on.

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