Pat Pheifer | StarTribune

“Just 24 hours before the Minneapolis school board votes on who will be the next leader of the state’s third-largest school district, about three dozen people showed up to a public comment session at district headquarters.

The two finalists — Brenda Cassellius, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education, and Ed Graff, outgoing superintendent in Anchorage, Alaska — were not there and the nine members of the board said little. But those who spoke had plenty to say.”

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Beth Hawkins | The 74

“(Minneapolis, Minnesota) The conspiracy du jour last week involving the Minneapolis Public Schools was this: A superintendent search committee Friday night advanced its two finalists for the job, Minnesota Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius and some guy from Alaska.

The dark horse, Ed Graff, is the outgoing superintendent in Anchorage. His contract was not renewed earlier this year because his board felt someone else was needed to drive aggressive academic growth.”

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Jenny Sedlis | The 74

“The shift in New York City to mayoral control of public schools was the culmination of a hard-fought effort to bring accountability to the education system. Beginning in 2002, decisions would no longer be made by a group of faceless bureaucrats; the buck would stop right at City Hall. If voters were unhappy with the state of their schools, they knew who was responsible. This core principle of accountability was the bedrock of the landmark education reforms achieved under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.”

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Charles Thompson | PennLive

“Gov. Tom Wolf made good Wednesday on his threat to veto legislation that would stop public school districts from making teacher layoffs based on seniority.

The bill has, and may continue to be, a policy priority for House and Senate Republicans, who mounted a major public relations effort over the last two weeks to try to get the Democratic governor to change his mind.

Under their proposal, seniority levels would be replaced with recent teacher evaluation ratings as the first priority by which school administrators assign furloughs in the event of budget-based staffing cuts.”

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Claudie Washington | Duluth News Tribune

“Every child in the state of Minnesota deserves equal access to a ‘uniform and thorough education,’ according to the state Constitution. Yet if every child is entitled to a quality education, why are fewer than 40 percent of poor students and students of color meeting grade-level standards in math and English while nearly 70 percent of their more affluent and white classmates meet or exceed them?”

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Duluth News Tribune

“The Duluth school district was added as a defendant this week in a lawsuit alleging the state’s lowest-performing teachers are concentrated in schools serving the highest percentages of poor and minority students.

The district joined three other Twin Cities-area districts in being added to an amended civil complaint filed in State District Court in Ramsey County. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of certain state teachers’ laws that plaintiffs say protect ineffective teachers and perpetuate achievement gaps.”

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Camille Artemus | Medium

“Public school parents across New York City are angry, frustrated and fed up because we see an ongoing injustice — the best teachers are sent to the wealthier neighborhoods and the low performing ones come to neighborhoods like mine in Bed-Stuy. We call for action from City Hall, but after all the promises this Mayor made to fight inequity and bridge the tale of two cities, it’s the most vulnerable kids who still suffer. The latest injustice is the City’s attempt to reduce spending by sending ineffective teachers stuck on the City payroll into low-income classrooms. Parents are demanding details and we’re demanding action, but our calls are falling on deaf ears.”

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The Wall Street Journal

“One goal of launching New York City’s high-school choice system more than a decade ago was to help poor teenagers escape the troubled options in their own neighborhoods.

But many of them are unprepared for selective public high schools with good graduation rates, and some find it difficult to navigate the application process, making it hard to grab opportunities across the city.

A new study that maps graduation rates by where students live—rather than by schools—highlights the challenge of cutting the link between the socioeconomic status of a student’s home community and his academic achievement.”

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The New York Times

“A New York State court on Tuesday threw out a teacher’s evaluation for the 2013-14 school year, based on a controversial state rating system, saying that it had been ‘arbitrary and capricious.’ But the court stopped short of ruling on the evaluation system more broadly because the state has already begun replacing it.

For the 2012-13 school year, Sheri G. Lederman, a longtime teacher in the high-performing Great Neck public school district, on Long Island, received what was known as a growth score of 14 points out of a possible 20; the score was meant to calculate student progress over time. Her students scored substantially higher than the state average on annual standardized tests in English and math, and her score put her in the ‘effective’ range.”

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