Texas Senate passes private school choice bill

Texas senators spent hours questioning how a “private school choice” bill would hold private schools accountable or help students with disabilities before voting to give it final passage. The version passed would limit eligibility for the programs to students who have attended a public school for at least a year, prevent incoming kindergartners from participating and would exclude smaller counties. Read more>>

The Wisconsin district's school board members voted to make its schools a sanctuary district. The move prevents school officials and staff from revealing information about students to immigration agents until school attorneys can review the agents' warrant. Read more>>

Lawmakers in the state House of Representatives passed legislation revising Michigan's high school graduation requirements, including giving students flexibility to take courses in areas such as computer coding instead of a foreign language. Read more>>

District Administration

Does your school district translate its website or other apps into foreign languages to serve non-English-speaking students and parents? DA wants to hear about the IT work involved and whether it has increased parent engagement or resulted in other benefits. Read more>>

New York spends the most on its schools per pupil in the nation, and the aid will likely go up by at least $1 billion more before the week is over. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers are hoping to reach a deal on a state budget for the new fiscal year , and how much aid the state's nearly 700 school districts will receive is still a sticking point. Read more>>

School districts would no longer be able to ask voters to raise their taxes permanently and districts would lose some state funding if they exceed their state-imposed limits on raising property taxes through referendums under a package of bills Republican lawmakers are releasing this week. Read more>>

Georgia lawmakers are sending a bill to Gov. Nathan Deal that mandates disclosure of each public school’s spending on items such as salaries and maintenance. The data must include a per pupil spending figure for each school, which would allow for school-by-school comparison. Read more>>

Tina Weaver

Seeking alternatives to expensive professional development that takes teachers out of their classrooms and requires substitutes, Madison County Public Schools in Virginia developed a solution. Read more>>

The West Virginia legislature is struggling to devise solutions for the state's large budget deficit, but it should stop short of the shell game it's considering that would affect taxpayers and county school boards. Read more>>

Students with learning disabilities are too frequently written off as being incapable of real learning and, therefore, expectations of them are unnecessarily low. Low expectations lead to low outcomes, while high expectations with appropriate support are far more likely to help students to meet their full potential. Read more>>

The defeat of the Republican plan to overhaul President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act offered a stark reminder about how much coalitions, persuasion and raw self-interest matter in politics. It's hard to miss how education reformers are making the same strategic mistakes in their approach to politics. Read more>>

LG is expanding its commercial LG OLED family and introducing Direct View LED displays. LG’s 2017 digital signage portfolio also features the 86-inch LG Ultra Stretch display, 4K Ultra HD monitors, outdoor signage systems and advanced video wall displays. Read more>>

The FutureSmart app is an exploratory life simulation that takes middle school students through financial decisions they will face throughout their lifetime, such as saving, paying for higher education, retirement, and opening and monitoring bank accounts. The app, developed by the MassMutual Foundation in partnership with EverFi, is offered in both English and Spanish. Read more>>

ClassFlow, the free, next-generation lesson delivery software, announced new partnerships with Gooru, SketchFab, PhET Interactive Simulations and Desmos to offer teachers the latest technologies for lessons, including 3D models, virtual reality, and science and math simulations. Read more>>

The San Francisco school board selected a city native to lead the district. Vincent Matthews is currently serving as a state administrator overseeing Inglewood USD. The school board did a national search for a new superintendent after Richard Carranza left the job last fall to lead the Houston school system. Read more>>

The Allendale Board of Education selected Pewamo-Westphalia Community Schools Superintendent Garth Cooper to replace the retiring Dan Jonker, who has led the Michigan district for the last nine years. Read more>>

After being without a superintendent for nearly eight months, Decatur Public School district ushered in a new face to fill that spot. Paul Fregeau, who was most recently the assistant superintendent of North Kansas City Schools, will become the Illinois district's newest superintendent. Read more>>