Today’s Headlines

• Part of Georgia’s Race to the Top Grant Put On High-Risk Status
• SparkTruck Is A Force For STEM Education On Wheels | TechCrunch
• Teachers Maintain a Majority on NEA Committees
• Foundation Releases Key Lessons On Principal Leadership Training
• Big school districts press for Common Core texts‎

Part of Georgia’s Race to the Top Grant Put On High-Risk Status
The department is worried that the state, which has had a number of amendments to its plan in the tricky area of teacher evaluation, has strayed too far from the vision it originally outlined in its winning application.

SparkTruck Is A Force For STEM Education On Wheels | TechCrunch

Budget cuts and bureaucracy have kept engineering equipment from our nation’s schools, so a scrappy Stanford team is taking a truck chock-full of fun tools to the students themselves. SparkTruck literally parks a engineering bench outside of schools, let’s students play with the latest in maker technology, and has managed to have a measurable impact on students’ path towards a career in science.

Teachers Maintain a Majority on NEA Committees

A constitutional amendment that would have decreased the number of classroom teachers required on National Education Association committees failed by just a handful of votes today to reach the two-thirds majority required. All committees will continue to have at least 75 percent classroom teachers, rather than the 50 percent proposed in the amendment.

Foundation Releases Key Lessons On Principal Leadership Training

Choose principal candidates selectively, offer strong coursework that applies theory directly to practice, and provide high quality mentoring and professional development: These are the keys to improving the ranks of school principals, according to the New York-based Wallace Foundation.

The foundation recently released a report that boils down a decade of research and lessons learned in the field. The report notes that while most states have adopted leadership standards and there is more diversity among providers of principal training, most university-based training programs have failed to keep pace with the evolving role of principals.

Big school districts press for Common Core texts‎

Leaders of urban school systems, including New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C., announced a campaign Thursday to press for books and other educational materials that are aligned with the Common Core academic standards that have been adopted by all but four states.