Published in The Brian Lehrer Show | WNYC

Carmen Fariña, New York City Schools Chancellor, looks ahead to Thursday’s first day of school and talks about the issues facing the schools and what to expect this year, and discusses Common Core testing, consolidating shrinking schools, and extra resources for students and their families, including English classes and cooking workshops on weekends.

More Here

Heard on All Things Considered | NPR, WNYC

“It’s back to school time around the country, so we thought it was a good time to check in with our country’s top education official, Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. There’s also news to report. Earlier this week, his agency proposed new rules that would govern how school districts distribute federal money meant to support the education of low-income kids. The rules are intended to ensure that these federal funds, known as Title I, can only be used in addition to state and local money and not instead of those funds. It turns out that some districts spend far more of their state and local funds on their more affluent schools. The new rules, if they last, could change that, forcing districts to share resources more evenly. It’s controversial.”

Read More

Ralia Polechronis | The Huffington Post

“Last week, the California Supreme Court told nine brave students it would not consider their constitutional challenge to state statutes that allow thousands of chronically ineffective teachers to remain in classrooms. Although the intermediate court ruling against the students stands as law in California, it is far from the definitive or widespread victory that opponents assert it is. The simple fact is that California’s highest court has not ruled – nor has any state’s highest court, for that matter – on the constitutionality of archaic, quality-blind tenure rules that protect even chronically underperforming teachers. In short, this fight is far from over.

Courts play an invaluable role in movements of social change, including monumental decisions on desegregation, marriage equality, and access to healthcare. But cases like Brown v. Board of Education do not happen overnight. They are the product of long-term incremental action, where even a loss or a decision not to act can pave the way for victory.”

Read More

What Kids Can Do with Challenging, Inspiring Schoolwork

Read Report Here

By Paul E. Peterson, Michael B. Henderson, Martin R. West and Samuel Barrows

“In its 10th annual survey of American public opinion, conducted in May and June of 2016, Education Next finds that the demise of school reform has been greatly exaggerated. Public support remains as high as ever for federally mandated testing, charter schools, tax credits to support private school choice, merit pay for teachers, and teacher tenure reform. However, backing for the Common Core State Standards and school vouchers fell to new lows in 2016. As in previous polls, Democrats are more supportive of Common Core than Republicans are, and we find polarization along party lines on several other issues. Surprisingly, more Democrats than Republicans support vouchers targeted to low-income students, tax credits, and vouchers for all families (universal vouchers).”

Read Full Survey Here

By Sarah Favot | The 74

“The attorneys involved in Vergara v. California, a landmark case that challenged teacher tenure laws, announced Tuesday they have filed a federal lawsuit in Connecticut challenging that state’s laws that they say restrict school choice options.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of the California Supreme Court’s decision Monday to decline to review an appellate court ruling that overturned Vergara v. California, effectively putting an end to that case’s four-year journey through the courts. The battle now moves to the California Legislature.”

Read More

By The LA Times Editorial Board

“The state Supreme Court made the right call this week when it left in place a lower court’s ruling that the teacher tenure system at California public schools does not violate students’ constitutional rights. But even though they’re not unconstitutional, the tenure laws are still problematic, and the Legislature needs to fix them.

The case, Vergara vs. California, was brought by school reformers on behalf of nine California public school students. It argued, among other things, that the laws awarded tenure too easily and then made it too difficult to dismiss ‘grossly ineffective’ teachers. The plaintiffs won at the trial level but lost on appeal. On Monday, the state Supreme Court declined to review the appellate decision.”

Read More

By Dmitri Mehlhorn | The 74

“In the long struggle to make the United States more just and perfect, court majorities have made some horrific mistakes. When that happens, the burden falls on dissents to provide hope for the future arc of the moral universe.

Such dissents often come from the most distinguished jurists. Benjamin Curtis, for instance, was the first formally trained lawyer on the United States Supreme Court. In 1857, he dissented from the Dred Scott case that eviscerated the civil rights of African Americans, arguing that: ‘free persons, descended from Africans held in slavery, were citizens of the United States.’ John Harlan dissented in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) with the following famous lines:

‘Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens…The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.'”

Read More

By Noah Feldman | Bloomberg View

“In a victory for teachers’ unions, the California Supreme Court on Monday refused to strike down the state’s generous tenure laws — which a lower court had said violated students’ rights to an adequate education. Significantly, the court’s 4-3 ruling didn’t break down on purely partisan lines. Two prominent liberals, each of whom could be contenders for the U.S. Supreme Court in a Hillary Clinton administration, dissented. That’s evidence of a growing divide among liberals about whether favoring teachers might actually be a bad thing for students.”

Read More