In the fall of 2017, advocates from A+ Education Partnership, a nonprofit education policy and practice organization in Alabama, contacted the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed) for help in ensuring that the state’s plan for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) would hold schools accountable for the performance of historically underserved students.

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What better way to kick off the school year than have students liven up the Federal Flash? This episode features Justice, a tenth-grade student at a public charter school and Elizabeth and Katie, both eighth graders in traditional public schools.

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The Senate passed its education spending bill this week, but the biggest debate wasn’t over whether low-income students should receive more funding. It was whether Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will allow school districts to buy guns with school safety money.

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Highline Public Schools is a large urban-suburban school district located just outside of Seattle, Washington. Of the district’s approximately 20,000 students, 77 percent are students of color and 67 percent come from low-income families. More than one-quarter of the students are learning to speak English. 

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At the start of my sophomore year of high school, a friend introduced me to a statewide Pennsylvania Youth and Government (YAG) program. “You get to write laws,” I remember her saying excitedly, while showing me the more than 500 pages of student bills. “You’re like a legislator.” Every student bill that was signed by the program’s youth governor landed on the desk of Pennsylvania’s real governor to consider as legitimate legislation. To me, the concept of having the chance to advise state policy as an adolescent was revolutionary. During the next three years, YAG gave me the confidence to voice the opinions that I previously thought were unworthy of consideration and I became aware of policy issues I did not know existed. The program changed my life, and the skills I gained from it will be long lasting.  

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Sometimes, diving into emotions requires going back to the basics. For one teacher, this means stepping away from the world of online social media and creating a “Twitter board” full of hand written “tweets.”

This week’s digest also explores how a garden in the Bronx changed students’ minds, connecting state assessments to classroom practice, and some great deeper learning action from social media! And if you’re exploring whether to launch a deeper learning initiative or want to strengthen or expand existing deeper learning practices, we have resources for you.

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Most people know that adolescents face dramatic changes in their appearance, but they do not know those changes are accompanied by biological changes in their brains too. These years of adolescence are a time of great opportunity and a time of increased vulnerability for students.

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When our good friend Andreas Schleicher stops by, it’s hard to resist asking him to lend his international perspective to some of the big questions facing education in the United States today. So, after our July 12 webinar on his new book, World Class: How to Build a 21st-Century School System, Andreas and I talked about politics, policy, and some of the challenges—and opportunities—facing the U.S.  education system.

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That morning started like any other that semester. I parked in the visitor lot at the high school in San Antonio, Texas, and showed the receptionist my ID badge with the word “SUBSTITUTE” printed in bold purple letters across the bottom. She smiled and waved me to a desk in the back of the office where she handed me a sticky note with a room number on it. I made my way through the school, searching for the number, as students gathered outside their advisory classes eating their breakfasts. I found my room—an eleventh-grade chemistry class—unlocked the door and reviewed the teacher’s lesson plans for the day. Written across the board in large letters were the classroom expectations: BE RESPECTFUL, BE RESPONSIBLE, BE READY. In retrospect, these guidelines were perhaps a reminder for me, just as much as for the students. 

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In this week’s Federal Flash we’ll tell you three important things in the new federal career and technical education (CTE) law that is on its way to President Trump’s desk.

We’ll also review the Education Department’s proposed new rules for the charter school program and a proposal from House Democrats to renew the Higher Education Act.

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