By Citizen Stewart

“A new national survey finds parents are happy with their schools, they believe their children are on track, and they feel the most important factor is their own accountability for their children doing well in school. Teachers and districts should rejoice.

Hart Research Associates, an opinion research firm that counts teachers’ unions among its clients, partnered with Learning Heroes (a nonprofit helping parents understand pathways to college success), the National PTA, the National Urban League, NCLR, and UNCF to pose questions online to 1,374 parents and guardians of K-8 public school students in Colorado, Illinois, and Louisiana.”

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By Keshia Clukey | Politico New York

“ALBANY — A majority of the state’s public school districts have put in place or have submitted their teacher and principal evaluation plans for approval, less than a month after lawmakers agreed to extend the deadline through December.

‘Districts and local unions have made significant progress over the last few months,’ said Carl Korn, spokesman for New York State United Teachers, the largest teachers union in the state. ‘The additional time is needed in some cases, but our understanding is that in many places what remains is the dotting of the i’s and crossing of the t’s on agreements.'”

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By Emily Deruy | The Atlantic

“Hillary Clinton used her address at the National Education Association’s annual meeting as an easy opportunity to criticize Trump for failing to support students. Her attempt to distance herself just enough from President Obama to attract teachers, but not so much as to alienate his supporters, proved a more challenging balancing act.

Speaking to more than 7,000 members of the largest labor union in the United States, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said, ‘It is time to stop focusing on, quote, failing schools. Let’s focus on all our great schools, too.’ Standardized testing, Clinton added, should go back to its “original purpose” of helping teachers and parents figure out which kids needs support.”

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By Lauren Camera | U.S. News & World Report

“It’s becoming more difficult for schools to accurately gauge the number of poor students they enroll – an important metric that’s used for everything from doling out federal aid to tracking academic performance and measuring achievement gaps.

For decades, schools have defined low-income students as those who enroll in the National School Lunch Program, which provides free- and reduced-priced lunch to eligible kids – those whose families below 185 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $45,000 for a family of four.”

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Ben Chapman | New York Daily News

“An impressive 45 city high schools managed above-average graduation rates in 2015, but still failed to prepare many students for college, a report by the reform group StudentsFirstNY shows.

The report employs city data to identify dozens of high schools that posted grad rates above the city’s record average of 70% set in 2015, but college readiness rates lower than 20%.

The city schools’ college readiness benchmarks are far more strenuous than the requirements for earning a diploma and are designed to set a standard of education to enable students to succeed in college.”

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Louis Freedberg | EdSource

“In one of the last acts of the current term, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition from plaintiffs in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association to rehear the case that the court had already ruled on in a 4-4-opinion in March.

The lawsuit sought to eliminate ‘agency fees’ that require teachers to pay a portion of union dues. If the plaintiffs – Rebecca Friedrichs and nine other California teachers – had won, it could have inflicted a potentially devastating financial blow against the CTA, and by extension all public employee unions.

The split opinion, which came about as a result of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, represented a major victory for the CTA and public employee unions. It kept the court’s earlier decision, requiring mandatory fees, intact.”

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Joshua Dunn | Education Next

“Vergara v. California, a 2012 lawsuit that challenged the state’s teacher-tenure laws, terrified teachers unions when it was filed. In April 2016, to the unions’ relief, they won a victory in the case. But that victory is likely to be Pyrrhic. Copycat cases have already been filed in New York and Minnesota that have a much better chance of success, and lawsuits in other states are sure to follow. Ironically, these cases will rely on the same political strategy and legal reasoning that unions have enthusiastically supported in school-finance cases around the country. Having sown the legal wind, the unions will now reap the litigation whirlwind.”

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Monica Disare | Chalkbeat NY

“With almost no public warning and little board discussion, a 17-member policymaking body wiped out one of the main elements of the state’s teacher evaluation law late last year.

A few months later, the same body, the New York State Board of Regents, passed a regulation that enabled thousands of students with disabilities to become eligible for diplomas only weeks before graduation. The provision was enacted so quickly, some disabled students could have diplomas in hand even before the public comment period on the measure ends.”

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Nick Anderson | The Washington Post

“Colleges routinely force students with weak math skills to take remedial classes before enrolling in one that yields credit, a requirement that poses one of the biggest hurdles for disadvantaged Americans on the path to getting a degree. Many placed in remediation get disheartened or sidetracked and end up dropping out of college before they ever really start.

New research suggests these students might fare better if they simply start in a college-level course and are given extra help on the side.”

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Dawn Geske | Northern California Record

“SAN FRANCISCO – Nine students have filed an appeal with the California Supreme Court against the state of California over the quality of teachers in low-income schools.

Vergara v. California claims that the state’s statutes were biased against poor students because during school layoffs, teachers with more seniority are kept versus talented and capable teachers that are more likely assigned to low-income areas. The lawsuit challenges California statues that govern the due process in teacher dismissals, by claiming that it almost impossible to dismiss incompetent teachers in schools in poor areas. The plaintiffs allege that those laws are unconstitutional and hurt students.”

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