Morning announcements: Alliance for Excellent Education offers MOOC-Ed

The Alliance has taken on a new initiative dubbed, “MOOC-Ed,” or a massive open only course for educators. The project is in conjunction with the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University’s College of Education, and is part of Project 24, a district-level initiative to help school leaders adopt and implement technology over the next 24 months. Education Week

Teachers are worried that the implementation of the Common Core State Standards will push struggling students further behind, especially in math. They’re struggling to figure out how to prepare the lagging students for the more rigorous skills. Education Week

The majority of students training to become teachers are white, a new study from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education finds. Their statistics show that a whopping 82% of teaching degree candidates at the Bachelor level in 2009-10 and 2010-11 were white. New York Times

The Department of Education issued a level to higher education institutes saying that financial aid can and will be awarded based on competency in the classroom, not just the number of credit hours students are taking. New America Foundation