School closures, past and present
- A group of Chicago parents are nearly two weeks into a hunger strike to get the city to revamp their scheduled-to-be-closed school. (DNAinfo)
- A mother explains the personal history with school closure that led her to join the strike. (Catalyst)
- And a researcher studying the school’s neighborhood who previously worked in a school that closed shares her perspective. (Seven Scribes)
- A meditation on the closure of Jamaica High School in New York City and the history, policy, and poverty that got us there. (New Yorker)
- Here’s what protest against the plan to close Jamaica looked like in 2009. (Chalkbeat)
- An advocate for overhauling struggling schools says his allies would do well to acknowledge why communities oppose closure. (Justin Cohen)
Ten years after Katrina
- This week was the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the storm that led to a radical restructuring of schools in New Orleans.
- A suite of stories recalls the storm’s impact on New Orleans schools, from the explosion of choice to the disappearance of black woman teachers and beyond. (Education Week)
- While outsiders masterminded much of what unfolded in New Orleans, local educators and advocates played a crucial role. (Andrew Rotherham)
- A journalist who covered the changes in New Orleans recalls moments when she could see the winners and losers clearly. (Schooled)
- An advocate who helped create many of the city’s new schools says the overhaul’s benefits to local students are clear but the idea of replicating it elsewhere is not. (Relinquishment)
- Preschool hasn’t seen needed changes since the storm, according to an early education advocate. (Ahead of the Heard)
- Here’s a roundup of the best reporting on the storm’s education impact from across the country. (L.A. Times)
What Americans really think about testing
- Two polls out this week find that Americans either really support testing or really don’t. (NPR)
- The poll commissioned by a publication that supports testing and accountability policies found wide support. (Education Next)
- The poll commissioned by a large association of educators, who tend to be wary of testing, found the opposite. (Phi Delta Kappan)
- Why the disparate findings? One analyst says it’s all in the questions. (Education Post)
- Here’s what the polls said about other education issues, including the Common Core and charter schools. (The Atlantic)
Back to school
- Know any ninth-graders feeling jitters about starting high school? Some older-by-a-year girls have advice for them. (Rookie)
- “It’s not because of the kids,” says a New York City teacher who’s not returning to the classroom after six years. “It’s just everything else.” (Yo Mista!)
- Come along for a ride as Tennessee educators start their school year by visiting students at home, a practice that can have long-lasting effects on parent involvement. (NPR)
- An Iowa school district welcomed educators back to class with an education jargon-rich parody of “One Day More” from Les Miz. (WGN)
In other interesting news
- A new study found that paying parents to help their children with homework produced few academic results. (BloombergView)
- Rupert Murdoch wants to unload Amplify, the once-hyped ed tech company that former New York City schools chief Joel Klein started. Here are two looks at what went wrong. (Buzzfeed, EdWeek)
- That teacher shortage that doesn’t exist in New York City? It probably doesn’t exist in Indiana, either. (Chalkbeat)
- A tiny, mighty Christian lobbying group has successfully blocked states from even minor oversight of homeschooling. (ProPublica)
- In Boston, more homeschoolers are secular, educated, and aiming to insulate their children from school’s dulling effects. (Boston Magazine)
- How many more children are living in poverty than there were a decade ago? A lot, and this map shows where they are. (Huffington Post)
- An educator of color pushes back against the call to ally the Black Lives Matter movement with public education protest. (Jose Vilson)
- A New York City teacher reflects on losing a former student whose death came after a police encounter. (The Atlantic)
- Two Massachusetts fourth-graders pulled a Chalkbeat and achieved impact with their article on sex-segregated lunchtime. (Good Morning America)
- The 2012 Chicago teachers strike had many ripple effects. The latest one is an erotic novel. (Teaching Now)