News from New York City:
- Investigators found and fined 13 DOE staffers for taking sick days when they weren’t sick. (Daily News)
- One of them, a school aide at PS 55, even lied that her mother had died. (Post)
- Parents at some of the affected schools aren’t happy about absentee teachers. (Daily News)
- Changes at Rikers Island’s school are meant to consolidate the city’s authority there. (NY1)
- One change will have student-inmates start planning for their release from day one. (NY1)
- New York City’s public schools are an outlier in the trend toward older kindergarten students. (Times)
- Despite test score declines, charter school students still outperformed students in district schools. (Post)
- The Daily News says UFT president Michael Mulgrew can learn from L.A.’s teacher data dump.
- Two former city teachers are among readers weighing in on the racial test score gap. (Times)
From beyond:
- New York school districts still don’t know exactly how much state aid they’ll get. (Albany Times-Union)
- The trend in South Korea is toward Western-style schools, complete with creativity. (Times)
- Los Angeles is opening a $578 million school on the site of the Ambassador Hotel. (AP)
- Spending on private tutoring is up nationally, and parents want results. (Times)
- Los Angeles’s teachers union will restart evaluation talks, but value-added’s role is unclear. (L.A. Times)
- Michelle Rhee’s tenure in D.C. could be decided by the mayoral primary next month. (Washington Post)
- Teach for America’s green recruits are playing an expanded role in many places. (Washington Post)
And from GothamSchools:
- We’re going to lie low this week and plan for the new school year (just two weeks away!). We’ll be right here if anything big happens. In the meantime, please take your last chance to fill out our reader survey if you haven’t already. And don’t hesitate to send along your news tips. We’ll be back in full force Aug. 30.