Oregon lawmakers' bill aims to clean up diesel school buses

Despite a high number of low-income and immigrant students, Miami-Dade recorded a milestone: the elimination of all F-rated district schools. According to the state Department of Education's annual school grades, the district overall earned a B average with two-thirds of all schools getting an A or B. Read more>>

When researchers recently released two studies on the effectiveness of private school voucher programs, advocates and opponents were quick to parse the findings in their favor. In reality, the studies showed little difference in academic achievement between students enrolled in private schools through a voucher program and their public school counterparts. Read more>>

In the latest step in a months-long funding accountability fight between the Ohio Department of Education and the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), the online charter school is now asking the Ohio Supreme Court to step in. Read more>>

Amid arguments about whether it could lead to racial segregation, the state Senate voted to study what’s the appropriate size for school districts and to look at ways to break up and merge school systems. Read more>>

With the hours dwindling before a potential state government shutdown at midnight Friday, legislative leaders are mulling the latest offer assembled by the Republican majority in the Senate. It includes a funding increase for public schools of $146.7 million, which is $35 million more than Republicans previously had offered. Read more>>

Lawmakers are considering a bill that would clean up dirty diesel buses. A drastically whittled down version of the original bill, it would dedicate more than $20 million to making sure school buses in Oregon are cleaner and safer by the year 2025. Read more>>

As more teaching and learning activities go digital, district leaders must find ways to provide 24/7 internet availability to all their students. Read more>>

Questions persists about whether accountability efforts could backfire by driving good teachers out of poorly rated schools. But sometimes the reverse is true: in certain circumstances, a bad accountability mark for a school decreases the likelihood that a teacher will leave, and even leads to more good teachers joining. Read more>>

The weighting of the criteria for the Maryland State Board of Education's new star rating system seems a bit off. While attendance is typically a strong indicator of an individual's academic success, poor attendance seems more a reflection of parenting rather than efforts of a school's teachers and administrators. Read more>>

Officially launching, Renaissance Flow 360 seamlessly connects assessment, planning, instruction, and practice in one place, allowing educators to drive and monitor growth for every student in their district. The assessment-driven personalized learning program recently collaborated with the El Paso ISD on an implementation. Read more>>

CodeMonkey debuted the Game Builder platform as an additional feature to its series of basic coding courses. The Game Builder is geared to advance students from learning code literacy to become digital creators by building and designing their own online games. Read more>>

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) released an updated version of its ISTE Standards for Educators, which supports educators by providing a framework for learning, teaching and leading that is amplified by technology. The Standards for Educators were last updated in 2008. Read more>>

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Construction is set to begin next month on the $100 million renovation of Weaver High School, a long-awaited project in Hartford that will eventually feature three school academies. The cost for the high school, expected to be ready by August 2019, mostly falls on state taxpayers. Read more>>

A state representative wants to prevent school districts from feeling pressured to proceed with major construction projects they might not be ready to complete. The introduced legislation would prevent a seemingly arbitrary timeline folded into state law from burdening school districts with facility projects in the state's PlanCon construction pipeline. Read more>>

Voters approved 154 bonds statewide last year worth about $27 billion, which translates into a lot of competition among districts for construction managers, architects, contractors and subcontractors, not to mention the bottleneck it will form at the Division of the State Architect, which must approve all projects before a shovel hits the ground. Read more>>