One of the biggest political stories of 2013 - a year of DC discord and gridlock - unfolded at the state level in North Carolina.

In 2012, North Carolinians elected a Republican to the governor's office. That same year, the Republican majority in the General Assembly - first elected in 2010 - grew to a supermajority. The result was that conservatives won the power to change state law dramatically - and over this last year, they used that power.

This Is the Common Core You Support?   by Paul Thomas on the Chalk Talk blog.

You have plenty of Urban Legend and baseless conspiracy theories swirling around the Common Core, and none of that really serves anyone well.

But you also have evidence (and from what I can tell, that doesn't carry much weight).    So for all those who support the Common Core, and tend to ignore the evidence-based arguments against CC, I really want you to respond to this from David Coleman "2 Years Ago: We Were a Collection of Unqualified People."

What Will It Take for Us to Get Back to Being a Decent Society?   by Robert Reich in the AlterNet blog.

It's the season to show concern for the less fortunate among us. We should also be concerned about the widening gap between the most fortunate and everyone else.

Although it's still possible to win the lottery, the biggest lottery of all is what family we're born into. Our life chances are now determined to an unprecedented degree by the wealth of our parents.

2013 in Review Part 1: Charter Schools: Public, Private, or Parasitic?  by Anthony Cody in EDWeek Teacher.

The year began with Michael Petrilli declaring his admiration for charter schools which suspend or expel large numbers of students, since they create a special place for those he called the "strivers." This framed a central concern about charter schools, which developed through the year. While many of these schools take pride in sending students to college, what happens to those that are screened out or pushed out?   

Book Censorship on the Rise in American Schools  by Alex Kane on the AlterNet blog.

Censorship of books is increasing across the United States.  A new report by the Kids' Right to Read Project (KRRP), an initiative of the National Coalition Against Censorship, shows that an increasing number of books dealing with race and sexuality or written by authors of color are being withdrawn from classrooms.

In November, the project, which fights against such censorship, dealt with three times their normal caseload.  In 2013, the Kids' Right to Read Project looked into 49 book bannings or removals from the classroom.