General school aid down statewide in Wisconsin

Fifty-five percent of the state’s public school districts, 230 of 422, will receive less general state this year, according to information released by the state Department of Public Instruction. Nearly all districts will also have 1.4 percent of their aid deducted to pay for the pupils enrolled in the 23 independent charter schools. Read more>>

A study found that the new state laws have led to a noticeable nationwide decline in repeated concussions among teenagers. Immediately after each law passed, the number of concussions increased due to better reporting but the numbers of repeated concussions began to decline after 2.6 years. Read more>>

The number of Mississippi public schools and districts rated as failing decreased by almost a third last year, according to new data. But the victory for some improved school districts could be short-lived because of a recalibration of the state’s grading system that sets the bar higher to achieve a passing score. Read more>>

As they grapple with a projected $33-million deficit for the 2018–19 school year, the members voiced support for efforts to decrease the district’s growing special education costs and for the superintendent's plan to increase class sizes, reduce the number of school days and other steps. Read more>>

The California district will reopen about half its campuses next week after canceling classes last week during the devastating North Coast fires. The district has about 2 million-square-feet of building space to clean up, as well as change 3,000 air filters. Read more>>

The Santa Fe school board has voted in favor of a plan to hold a joint election with Santa Fe Community College in February, with both entities asking local voters to approve about $95 million in general obligation bonds to improve facilities at public schools and the college campus. Read more>>

Military-connected students—compared to civilian classmates—have moderately elevated rates of just about all risk factors, including suicidal thoughts, substance abuse and bullying. Read more>>

While not a silver bullet, re-envisioning school leadership staffing is more likely to create schools that effectively meet students' needs—and that principals and teachers want to work in—than U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' proposal to rollback federal regulations which were put in place to promote high-quality learning environments. Read more>>

Right now, Pennsylvania is one of just nine states that allows its teachers to strike. It’s also the national leader in teacher strikes. The state sets a limit on the number of days a strike can wear on, but the strikes are still enormously disruptive to families who have to seek out child care during walkouts by teachers or cancel scheduled vacations. Read more>>

We need to be asking what we are teaching when we teach To Kill a Mockingbird, and how useful those lessons are to today's students. We should be asking whether the novel should still take up space in curriculum that could be well used to expose students to literary voices on race and injustice that have emerged in the past 50 years. Read more>>

This partnership provides districts and schools using the Infinite Campus student information system with a connection between itslearning and the Campus Grade Book for real-time assignment score passback. Read more>>

EMC School will bundle i-Culture, its cultural immersion tools, with all Spanish, French and German e-books. Launched in 2011, i-Culture was previously offered either separately, requiring a unique sign-on, or as an integrated part of EMC’s Passport proprietary world language learning environment. Read more>>

“Quests” gamifies classroom lessons by overlaying a teacher’s existing lesson plans onto a rich fantasy world, which students navigate by completing curriculum-related assignments. Each world’s map comprises branching pathways, and a student’s journey is personalized based on how the student performs on each task. Read more>>

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The Danville Area School District has hired Jason Bendle as its new superintendent. Currently superintendent of the Saint Clair ASD, Bendle will replace Cheryl Latorre, who retired in July. Read more>>

The New York district's board of education has selected a Lansingburgh chief information officer and high school principal as its next superintendent. Francis Macri will take over the top post at the rural Schenectady County school district in January, when current Superintendent Christine Crowley retires. Read more>>

The Virginia public school system's Superintendent Ashby Kilgore will retire at the end of this year. First appointed to the position in 2007, Kilgore will leave as the longest tenured superintendent of the school division. Read more>>