Good morning! Hope you’ve had a great week… let’s get to it!
On Monday, Governor Cuomo announced his new NY Education Reform Commission.
- Media coverage: NYT School Book; Times Union; Democrat and Chronicle
- With no sitting superintendent, school board member, teacher or parent advocate on the membership list, educators are concerned about a “Commission of outsiders.”
- This commission was “put together from the top down, when the problem is best viewed and analyzed from the bottom up.”
Sorry, kids, can’t afford you: No matter what the judgment in a case to improve aid to small urban districts, students will lose.
Without providing notice, the Republican-controlled Senate approved $9.95 million in aid to school districts this week. The money was, sadly, not distributed based on need, but along party lines. Schools with republican legislators were the only ones to benefit.
Life-saving legislation or unfunded mandate? Lawmakers, advocates want CPR training in schools
Great article on tax cap math: “It’s not nearly as simple as taking 2 percent off the top.”
Faced with consequence of freezing tax levy at current levels, schools fear new cost of ‘no’ vote.
In the realm of online learning: Harvard and MIT announced this week that they will be jointly offering free classes to anyone in the world who wants to take them. Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan are doing the same.
And here’s an interesting article from Diane Ravitch: A primer on the group driving school reform.
As always, if we’ve missed any good articles, let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!