TOP NEWS The Heartland Institute The bill would remove approximately 100 mandates governing public education, such as eliminating a kindergarten readiness assessment and giving the state government the authority to implement academic standards. Read more>> From DA Magazine Nancy Mann Jackson Here are five crucial decisions to make in developing best practices for the wide variety of internet filters—and your options for using them—in K12 schools. Read more>> St. Louis Post-Dispatch Missouri’s elementary and secondary public schools would get a record level of state dollars—$6.1 billion—under Gov. Eric Greitens’ budget, but his proposal still wouldn’t be enough to meet funding levels required by state law. Read more>> WJLA A survey of Washington, D.C., teachers found that 46.5 percent of teachers said they felt pressured to change a student's grade or pass them when they did not meet the requirements. Nearly a quarter say they had grades and attendance records changed by others at the school. Read more>> The Spokesman-Review Sherri Ybarra, Idaho’s state superintendent of schools, made a strong pitch to state lawmakers to raise the public school budget by 6.8 percent next year, with the biggest portion of the increase going to the multiyear effort to raise teachers’ salaries. Read more>> The Plain Dealer Students from the just-closed ECOT online charter school have started to land in Ohio school districts and other charters, but the numbers remain low and it's too early to tell how well the process is working. There's a clear trend so far, however. ECOT students are rushing to other online charters and trickling to districts. Read more>> Houston Chronicle Houston ISD plans to move forward with significant changes to 15 low-performing schools, regardless of whether the district receives a one-year reprieve from state accountability ratings. The district would hand over control of individual schools to outside organizations, or close and reopen campuses with entirely new staff and programming. Read more>> OPINION Lexington Herald-Leader A proposed bill would limit school-based decision making councils' authority by allowing school boards to overturn council decisions, policies or actions. Such a change would make it harder to address student needs unique to a school and would stifle innovation. Read more>> Chalkbeat Indiana Indiana’s largest district is pursuing a new vision for education that aims to shift power from the central office to building principals. But as leaders move forward with their plan, they are facing a host of questions over how—and when—to cede control. Read more>> INDUSTRY NEWS Learn4Life HOPE, or Helping Our Parenting-teens Excel, is a program that offers mentorship and support to its high school students who are teenage parents. It focuses on teaching students life skills, child development, health, food and nutrition, and financial planning while they're working toward a high school diploma. Read more>> Data To The People Databilities, a data literacy competency framework, sets out 15 competencies within three branches of data literacy and provides six levels of progression with an emphasis on highlighting additional skills and expertise acquired at each level. Read more>> Edthena Uploading is a crucial step in the process of recording and sharing classroom videos for professional development. Edthena has developed a new way to streamline this process by creating a one-click video recording and uploading solution for Google Chrome. The new video tool runs inside the web browser already installed on teachers’ devices. Read more>> ✭ Visit the District Administration's PR Portal ✭ PEOPLE WATCH Wicked Local Lexington The Lexington Public Schools School Committee voted to hire Julie Hackett as the district’s next superintendent. Hackett, who currently serves as superintendent at Taunton Public Schools, will succeed current Superintendent Mary Czajkowski. Read more>> Troy Daily News Troy City Schools Superintendent Eric Herman will retire at the end of the school year. He first joined the district in 1998 as a junior high school assistant principal and rose throughout the ranks until he was hired to lead the district as superintendent in March 2011. Read more>> News-Press Cape Coral announced that the governing board of the city's Charter School Authority appointed Jacquelin Collins as the new superintendent of the charter school system. She was the interim superintendent of the city's four charter schools since former superintendent Nelson Stephenson left in April 2017. Read more>> | 