Afternoon Announcements: Impact Aid Districts to Receive Funds Early This Year

US eighth-graders in half the country did better than average on an international test in math and science. Even the top students, though, lagged behind South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. The highest scoring state was Massachusetts and the lowest was Alabama.  The Washington Post

Impact Aid school districts will receive a majority of the money they are owed early this year. Politics K-12

“In traditional schooling, time is a constant and understanding is a variable. A fifth-grade class will spend a set number of days on prime factorization and then move on to study greatest common factors — whether or not every student is ready. But there is another way to look at schooling — through the lens of a method called ‘mastery learning,’ in which the student’s understanding of a subject is a constant and time is a variable; when each fifth grader masters prime factorization, for instance, he moves on to greatest common factors, each at his own pace.” The New York Times

The Common Core State Standards are back on track toward implementation in Michigan, after all 38 members of the state Senate voted to spend money on them. Michigan Live