Arne Duncan’s quest to push for educational equity through high standards and accountability from the highest branch of government inspires a lot of passion, both in favor of his vision and in opposition to it. Politico
The “opportunity gap” doesn’t end at high school. Students from affluent families are more likely to land elite jobs after college than students from working-class homes, partly because of social skills they learned from their parents. The Washington Post
What the sound of slamming lockers, or lack thereof, tells us about the other ways a Denver school is trying to improve, including its use of a New York-developed Common Core-aligned curriculum. Chalkbeat
Do high schools that train students for technical vocations, not college, represent an abandonment of those students or an investment in their future? One Philadelphia school offers clues. The Atlantic
As a charter school chain designed to upend traditional school bureaucracies grows larger and its systems grow more complex, the ways its executive handles logistical snafus reveal a lot about the challenges of running large school systems and what changing those systems could actually take. Chalkbeat
An Ohio dad becomes Internet famous for posting on Facebook the donation check he wrote to a school making fun of Common Core… Buzzfeed
… And then an Ohio math teacher takes him down for mocking what he didn’t understand. Patheos
Here’s a moving essay about the emotional toll it takes on immigrant students when teachers and peers refuse to learn how to properly pronounce their names. The Toast
The experience of having one’s name butchered is common for English language learners, and can have subtle but lasting consequences on children’s educations. Chalkbeat
NPR’s Terry Gross interviews journalist Dale Russakoff about her book “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?” describing the five-year experiment to fix schools in Newark, N.J., a city beset by poverty and violence. National Public Radio
