In addition, states that invest more dollars in education benefit not only their residents but also their economies. The Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, reported that income is higher in states where the workforce is well educated and hence more productive. With higher incomes, workers in turn can contribute more in taxes to beef up state budgets over the long run.

The American education system, the story goes, is mediocre. A new report from the National Center for Educational Statistics complicates that picture a bit. It attempts to rank how individual states compare internationally, and ends up showing a wide gap between the highest-performing states and the lowest: Massachusetts does quite well against other countries, while Mississippi, Alabama, and the District of Columbia do poorly.
 

Consumers of education are changing their purchasing habits.   This is due to a combination of cost, and a growing concern about student's and family's return on investment, specifically related to skill sets, jobs, and debt.  There is an imbalance between what a "college education" is sold as, and what it actually does - it's a disconnect in the "college story," if you will.  That conflict or imbalance in the education value proposition, is tricky, so let's try it this way:  If non-profit colleges, who make up more than 80% of the market, want their value proposition to be sustainable, then by necessity, they are going to have to place an ever-increasing emphasis on both delivering and measuring their institution's effectiveness in job placement.

In a red-brick school administration building here, parents and community members are listening to a panel discussion about the new Common Core-aligned test coming this year - and, in most cases, venting disapproval.

The new test, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, "is hurting children. It's too stressful," says Cynthia Curcio, an interior designer whose grandson took part in the PARCC field test this year.

The study examined adolescent behaviors and risks around the globe and found that 90 percent of the world's 1.2 billion adolescents reside in lower and middle-income countries, where sexual health programs are for the most part absent.  This is despite the fact that researchers determined that sexuality and gender identity begins during "very young adolescence" typically between the ages of 10 and 14. It is during this time that children are most receptive to sex education messages that will go on to shape their beliefs around sex in the future.

America's Classist Education System  by  Peter Dreier  on the AlterNet blog.

America's education system is unequal and unfair. Students who live in wealthy communities have huge advantages that rig the system in their favor. They have more experienced teachers and a much lower student-teacher ratio. They have more modern facilities, more up-to-date computer and science equipment, and more up-to-date textbooks. They have more elective courses, more music and art offerings, and more extracurricular programs. They have better libraries, more guidance counselors and superior athletic facilities.

I no longer think this "war" is a worthy cause. Reading teachers understand that students need both phonics and meaning. They know that children need to be able to sound out words but that it is boring to do that for weeks on end. Children need meaning. They get it when their teachers read to them, and they get it when they learn to read by themselves.
 

Here is a piece about a cheating scandal in Wisconsin that speaks to a much larger problem about how and why kids cheat on tests. It was written by Vicki Abeles, a filmmaker, attorney and advocate for students and education. She is the co-director and producer of the education documentary "Race to Nowhere" and founder of the non-profit End the Race, an organization established to inspire individual and community action to reclaim healthy childhood and transform our education system.    Related article by Vicki Abeles, click here.

 Tests That Look Like Video Games   by Anya Kamenetz on the NPR Post

Few other federal programs so fully embody the heady optimism and charge-ahead spirit of the War on Poverty as Head Start, envisioned 50 years ago as part of that sweeping presidential initiative and brought to life in the summer of 1965.  "Five- and 6-year-old children are inheritors of poverty's curse and not its creators," President Lyndon B. Johnson said in a May 1965, in, announcing the creation of a federally funded preschool program for the nation's poorest children. "Unless we act, these children will pass it on to the next generation, like a family birthmark."

Some school districts across the country have begun to convene principals in professional learning communities (PPLC) as a strategy to help principals develop as instructional leaders, and they have designated executive-level central office staff to lead the PPLCs. Extant research suggests the promise of PPLCs for supporting principal development but raises significant questions about what central office leadership of such PPLCs entails and if central office administrators are up to the task.
 

In the stories of exorbitant costs and incompetence, teacher tenure laws have achieved mythic proportions. Judge Rolf Treu's tentative decision in Vergara v. California may be the death knell for teacher tenure. But what will change as a result? A look to the past reveals that teacher tenure never really protected teachers and nor was it supposed to. Using history as a lens, this commentary explores the origination of tenure policies and the debates that surrounded them. This commentary argues that embedded in the tenure debates is a much larger problem that should concern us all.