Legal battle refueled over inadequacy of Pa.'s public school funding

With two justices dissenting, Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has revived a legal battle over whether the state's system for funding public schools violates the civil rights of students in poorer districts. Read more>>

State officials are appealing a lower court decision that ruled the state's funding system was unconstitutional. The judge said the money being spent was enough, but the way it was spent was irrational. The state argued that test the judge used to apply this was arbitrary. It's unclear when the Supreme Court will issue its decision. Read more>>

The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow overbilled the state again in the 2016-17 school year, the Ohio Department of Education reports, and could have to return more than $19 million. Ohio's largest charter school has been fighting in court for more than a year over how many students it has and how many it can bill the state to educate. Read more>>

More than half of elementary and middle school students were performing at proficient or distinguished levels in reading and social studies and graduation rates for the 2016-17 school year went up to nearly 90 percent, according to the Kentucky Department of Education. The recently released assessments happen as state educators move to a new accountability system. Read more>>

The newly announced Charter Schools Program grants from the U.S. Department of Education show nine state education agencies receiving about $144.7 million, with the rest going to two state agencies, 17 nonprofit charter management organizations and six other nonprofit groups. Read more>>

Although Florida is becoming a more racially diverse state, its public-school system is becoming more segregated, a new study shows. About 32 percent of Hispanic students and 35 percent of black students in Florida attend “intensely segregated” schools, defined as having a nonwhite student body of 90 percent or greater. Read more>>

Learn how to incorporate these technologies to improve your STEM programs in this free DA web seminar. Register now>>

What schools are trying to do to prevent bullying appears to have had almost no positive impact. Read more>>

Discipline problems will continue unless we use more effective ways to reinforce the positive behaviors that drive academic achievement and create more peaceful school environments. Simply put, children need conversation, not isolation. Read more>>

As a new academic year begins, rollbacks of federal civil rights protections for transgender students, the rescission of policies to ensure access to opportunity for undocumented immigrant students and conversations about refugee bans and border walls are resulting in fear and, potentially, further isolation for many students. Read more>>

Schools that teach high school ethnic studies can expect to see improved grades in low-performing students, increased graduation rates and better social outcomes. We should keeping pushing to ensure our students see their stories reflected in the textbooks Texas approves for its classrooms. Read more>>

Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance members will now have the ability to share knowledge, best practices and establish quality standards for online education. Read more>>

The newly designed professional learning platform provides educators with a more personalized experience, enabling them to create individualized learning pathways and receive recognition for their learning through job-embedded, portfolio-based micro-credentials. Read more>>

Educators can look to Boxlight’s MimioConnect website for thousands of free lesson plans and activities, many of them teacher-created. The plans span the preK-12 curriculum and include world languages, history, social studies, reading, language arts, science, mathematics and more. Read more>>

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The West York Area School District has named Todd M. Davies as its new superintendent. He arrives from the Exeter Township School District, where he has served as assistant superintendent since 2013. Davies’ hiring follows the resignation of Emilie Lonardi, who left the school district after 19 years. Read more>>

Pam Moran, who has been superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools since 2006, announced her retirement, wrapping up a career in education that has spanned five decades. Deputy Superintendent Matt Haas will follow in her footsteps next year as superintendent. Read more>>

Wisconsin's Sheboygan Area School District wrapped up a yearlong effort to find a new superintendent by appointing a district leader to the post. Seth Harvatine, Sheboygan’s assistant superintendent of student and instructional services, will become the next superintendent. Read more>>