1. Obama’s 2015 budget includes $120 million to create safe schools and intervene early on in the early lives of troubled children. $25 million is for violent-prone schools, and $50 million is to train staff in violence- and bullying-reducing strategies.
2. Obama has now launched his ConnectED to link technology companies with schools and predicts the channeling of some $2 billion in education-technology goods and services to schools.
3. Georgia has had part of its Race to the Top winnings put on hold for such reasons as its resistance to the Common Core and setbacks for its teacher-evaluation system.
4. The Office of Head Start has awarded $60 million over 5 years for Detroit’s early childhood program. Four other sites will benefit similarly.
5. A parent privacy lobby continues to gain momentum and also attract powerful allies on both the left and the right. It’s already helped put inBloom, a data storage company, out of business.
6. Kindergarten teachers now apparently think academic instruction should begin in preschool, with kids knowing their letters and numbers by the time they start kindergarten.
7. ACT, Inc. finds that only a few at-risk students who start out “far off track” academically are able to recover within 4 years.
8. A recent National Council on Teacher Quality study finds that teaching colleges are too lenient in their admission criteria and fail to prepare their students to teach such subjects as reading, math, and science.