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Only about half of LA Unified charters meeting state goals
For decades, charter schools have been held out as one of the great hopes of public education — private institutions funded with taxpayer dollars, but free from some of the strictures that saddle traditional public schools. And few school systems have embraced charters as much as the Los Angeles Unified School District has in recent years, with dozens of new charters routinely approved at board meetings. But school performance measures released Thursday show that charters are not a silver bullet. KPCC
Federal education law traps schools in spiral of failure
Commentary: Nearly a dozen years after President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind law, its deepest imprint may be its labeling of 90 percent of California’s schools serving poor children as failures. That is the depressing conclusion to be drawn from the latest scorecard of how California schools have done on the impossibly high bar set by the law on a range of accountability measures. EdSource
Goodbye, API: Get ready for rough transition to better measuring
Say farewell to the API as you know it. Welcome to new era of accountability, with at least a couple years of confusion in between. The release Thursday of the results on the state’s Academic Performance Index marks the end of a decade of judging student performance based on test scores alone. EdSource
New LAUSD technology panel tackles details of iPad project
A day after LAUSD handed out iPads to kids at two of its campuses, the school board’s Technology Committee started its own deep dive into the program that will put a tablet computer in the hands of every student by this time next year. Chaired by Monica Ratliff, who gave up her teaching career after she was elected to the board in May, the panel got an overview Wednesday of Los Angeles Unified’s ambitious technology initiative. LA Daily News
Arne Duncan Attaches More Strings to NCLB Waiver Renewals
Two years after offering states waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act, the U.S. Department of Education is expecting states to up the ante on teacher quality if they want another two years of flexibility. Barring a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the current version of the law, this waiver renewal process marks the last opportunity for the Obama administration to put its stamp on the ESEA and shape a future law. To get a two-year extension of their waivers, states must reaffirm their commitment to college- and career-ready standards and tests, and to implementing differentiated accountability systems that focus on closing achievement gaps, according to new state guidance issued today. Education Week
New Guide To Help States Commonly Define English-Learners
Can Florida agree with California on who an English-language learner is? Can Texas and Illinois move closer to using the same criteria for deciding when a student is no longer an ELL? Will all, or at least most, states be able to share a more consistent way of defining different levels of English proficiency? Those questions may soon be answered. EdWeek