The Stimulus has $12 billion in stopgap funding to keep schools operating and another $100 billion or so for other purposes. And, this week, every state started trying to claim their share. Just check your local paper, it's pretty much in every one. Here is a NY Times summary.
Also, Duncan agrees that Title I and IDEA are vastly underfunded (quite a change from the previous administration).
"This is righting a historical injustice, a historical wrong," he said. "These have been desperately underfunded, in some cases for decades."
A new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality this week has most states failing in their teacher policies. I'm not sure why every report has to have a "failing" and passing metric. It's silly.
Indiana is considering a teacher immunity law. I think that is a good idea. I really prefer states have a clear teacher immunity policy rather than letting courts define some ambigious policy that manifested itself out of the soverign immunity doctrine.
The protest over education budgets cuts speads beyond California to Arizona.
Maine's school consolidation mandate is not going that smoothly.
Teachers in Michigan can't challenge the schools' disciplinary decisions for students in court.
A teacher residency program (think medical school) in Ohio?
Virginia's legislature wants to give special education students a year (fed. req. 90 days) to appeal their special education hearing decisions to court.
The NAACP in Mississippi takes a stand against accountability provisions. Sort of nice to see - I wish they would take a larger role in a lot more states. I think they have a very good point in this case and it is good to hear it coming from them - as I think people assume AA groups are happy with more stringent accountability provisions typically.
Mississippi is also considering a sex-education mandate - currently none exists.
What happens when an Ed.D. is elected governor? This, for one.
The Oregon Supreme Court rejects a school funding lawsuit.
And, I don't really know how this happened, but cursive writing has really become a hot topic in the past few weeks. I don't write in cursive whatsoever.
For your Friday Fun: Learn to Change, Change to Learn - taken from Dr. McLeod's Oklahoma presentation.