Afternoon Announcements: Maryland Schools Move Away from Suspensions

Schools around the state of Maryland are changing their approach to discipline in an effort to keep students in classrooms instead of suspending them. The Baltimore Sun

President Obama will give his annual State of the Union address tonight. How big of a priority will education be? Politics K-12

The U.S. Department of Education followed through on a promise to withhold nearly $10 million of Race to the Top grant money from Georgia if it did not fix its problems with teacher evaluations. The state failed to adhere and forfeited the money, for now. Politics K-12

New analysis of the 2013 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that fourth-graders in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia have some of the nation’s largest gaps in reading proficiency when broken down by income level. The Washington Post