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NJ Spotlight--Agenda: Lead Testing Gets Regulatory Fast Track
State board to move on several state initiatives, including Abigail’s Law
Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2016 Time: 10 a.m. Where: New Jersey Department of Education, 1st-floor conference room, 100 River View Plaza, Trenton RELATED LINKS School’s not out for board: The summer months can be slower for the State Board of Education, but the monthly meeting today -- and again in August -- will take up some pressing issues. First and foremost will be the expedited “special adoption” of new regulations to require schools regularly test their water for lead, as ordered by Gov. Chris Christie and the Legislature.
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/16/07/13/agenda-lead-testing-gets-regulatory-fast-track/
John Mooney | July 13, 2016
Star Ledger--Another state drops PARCC for high school students
Illinois has become the latest state to distance itself from the controversial PARCC exams used in New Jersey schools.
The Illinois State Board of Education on Monday announced the state will no longer administer the tests in its high schools. High school juniors will instead take the SAT, which will be paid for by the state.
The move came after two years of PARCC testing in Illinois were highlighted by low scores and thousands of students skipping the tests and amid calls for more equitable access to college entrance exams.
Adam Clark | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com| July 12, 2016 at 12:15 PM, updated July 12, 2016 at 12:25 PM
Star Ledger/NJ Spotlight--10 most common languages of N.J.'s polyglot student population
Spanish is the undisputed leader, but kids in New Jersey's schools speak everything from Arabic to Portuguese and Chinese to Telugu
New Jersey has almost 2 million foreign-born residents, about 22 percent of the state's population. More than 90,000 of them are school-aged, which has broad implications for the state's schools.
Educators throughout the state are faced with the task of teaching students who do not speak English well, or at all. Some schools have only a few students, while in others, a majority of students speak one or many languages other than English. An analysis of the most recent New Jersey School Performance Report for the 2014-2015 school year indicates that public school students spoke more than 165 different languages at home.
These are the 10 languages spoken by the most students, after English, last year:
Colleen O’Dea| on July 12, 2016 at 11:22 AM, updated July 12, 2016 at 11:24 AM
July 11, 2016
NY Times--Public Schools? To Kansas Conservatives, They’re ‘Government Schools’
Free State High School in Lawrence, Kan., a public school. Kansas has for years been the stage for a messy school funding fight that has shaken the Legislature and reached the State Supreme Court. Credit Mike Yoder/The Lawrence Journal-World, via Associated Press
LEAWOOD, Kansas — Erica Massman, a moderate Kansas Republican, refers to the building where her daughter attends fourth grade as a public school.
Ms. Massman’s mother, whose politics tilt further to the right, calls it something else: a government school.
“My mother, who is a Tea Party person, started saying ‘government schools’ all the time,” said Ms. Massman, recalling when she first heard the phrase around 2010. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow.’”
Kansas has for years been the stage for a messy school funding fight that has shaken the Legislature and reached the State Supreme Court. Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, and his political allies threatened to defy the court on education spending and slashed income taxes in their effort to make the state a model of conservatism.
Somewhere along the way, the term “government schools” entered the lexicon in place of references to the public school system.
By JULIE BOSMAN| JULY 9, 2016
