Arkansas: A federal judge's ruling on the state's school choice law opens the door for legislative action on choice. (Arkansas News)
Maine: Gov. Paul LePage and the newly formed Maine Charter School Commission are at odds over the pace of the commission's work. (Bangor Daily News)
Louisiana: More financial concerns surface about a private school that has drawn an unflattering spotlight to the state's new voucher program. (Monroe News Star) Meanwhile, state education officials are still considering how best to assess private schools that accept voucher students. (New Orleans Times Picayune.) And lawsuits over the voucher program begin to pile up. (Shreveport Times)
Pennsylvania: Lawmakers get set to consider school choice expansion in the form of more tax credit scholarships. (Harrisburg Patriot News) The Pittsburgh schools system is considering its own virtual school to win back students lost to cyber charter schools. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)
Michigan: Black students in charter schools outperform their peers in traditional public schools, a study by a charter school support group finds. (MLive.com) (more…)
A year after I began work as an education reporter, I witnessed a classroom scene so shocking, it haunts me to this day. I asked a high school teacher in a typical, normal public school if I could sit in on his class, and he said sure. He flipped on the most boring documentary ever made - a decades-old snoozer on map making, if I remember right - and turned off the lights. Heads became one with desk tops. Eyes closed. And then the really bad thing happened.
The teacher - who was also a teachers union representative - sat back in his chair, put his feet up and unfurled a newspaper with a flick of his wrists.
In the aftermath, I had to tell myself: Don't leap to strong conclusions. Don't let this one crazy thing unnecessarily taint the full picture about teachers and teachers unions. And I don't think I have. As an education reporter for many years, I saw plenty of awesome teachers in public schools and a handful of really bad ones. I saw teachers unions take positions on issues that jibed with the facts, and others that were just flat ridiculous. The world of education as I've come to know it is often complicated and gray, and sometimes it's hard to tell good guys from bad. With so much hanging in the balance, we should all be careful before we decide whether an obviously rotten apple is a representative example or an anomaly, or whether a small string of them is unfortunate coincidence or troubling trend.
I was reminded of that teacher and his newspaper this past week because of two story lines that have been running simultaneously in the Tampa Bay Times. (more…)
