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NJ Spotlight—Money Still Makes Biggest Difference to Kids’ Wellbeing in NJ
But even wealthiest counties can improve in some ways while the poorest do surprisingly well in some aspects of education, health, and safety
Advocates for Children of New Jersey’s annual Kids Count report on the state’s counties has a different look, but the same basic message: wealth makes a difference when it comes to the education, health, and safety of children.
The organization released today its 2017 profiles and rankings based on a dozen measures of child wellbeing. Rather than give each county an overall rank, ACNJ rated the counties in four areas: economics, health, safety, and education.
Colleen O'Dea | July 10, 2017
Star Ledger--5 things parents & students should know about N.J.'s new education budget
TRENTON — The dust has settled on New Jersey's final 2018 budget, approved earlier this week after a political standoff and three-day government shutdown.
Education funding, including the expansion of pre-kindergarten, was a key part of the negotiations.
Here's what parents and students should know about the state's spending plan.
1. More K-12 money
The final budget maintains the $100 million increase in K-12 funding Democrats wanted, the first step in a plan to increase school spending by a projected $1.6 billion
However, many districts won't be gaining or losing as much state aid as originally thought.
A proposed $46 million relocation of existing school funding was reduced to $31 million to ensure that no district loses more than 2 percent of its state aid. So, while there are still winners and losers, the swings in funding are smaller than first advertised.
Even districts hit with a reduction in aid might be able to find some good news in the budget, though. The state will pay out an extra $25 million in reimbursements for excessive special education costs incurred this school year.
By Adam Clark | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com| Updated July 08, 2017, Posted July 08, 2017
NY Times--DeVos’s Hard Line on New Education Law Surprises States
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who made a career of promoting local control of education, has signaled a surprisingly hard-line approach to carrying out an expansive new federal education law, issuing critical feedback that has rattled state school chiefs and conservative education experts alike.
President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 as the less intrusive successor to the No Child Left Behind law, which was maligned by many in both political parties as punitive and prescriptive. But in the Education Department’s feedback to states about their plans to put the new law into effect, it applied strict interpretations of statutes, required extensive detail and even deemed some state education goals lackluster.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/us/politics/devos-federal-education-law-states.html?_r=0
ERICA L. GREENJULY 7, 2017
Education Week--Too Few ELL Students Land in Gifted Classes
Linnea Van Eman, the gifted education coordinator for the Tulsa school district, sees too many gifted students who simply don't have the language skills to show what they can do.
The 36,000-student Oklahoma district has been pushing hard to bring more students from traditionally underrepresented groups—and English-language learners in particular—into its gifted program. Using a combination of more-diverse testing, greater parent outreach, and closer observation, Van Eman and her teachers are working to fill equity gaps in the district's advanced programs.
"Any child who can translate for their parents and is decoding in two languages all the time, that's huge," Van Eman said. "We need to push back against this perception that giftedness has to look a certain way."
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/06/21/too-few-ell-students-land-in-gifted.html
Sarah D. Sparks and Alex Harwin| June 20, 2017
