Curriculum

Reading Roundup: Senior Year, Title I, Common Standards

By Catherine Gewertz — March 03, 2010 1 min read
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Time to play catch-up after having been gone from the newsroom for a week. There are a number of good reads I want you to know about.

Check out this story from USA Today about how teenagers are changing their senior year of high school. This is something that interests me, and I hope it interests you as well. The move to revamp senior year is certainly a symptom of one of the illnesses of high school. But it also strikes me as something that could carry great risks as well as potentially great opportunities. All in all, worth watching.

A new study of what makes education at the middle-grades level work yields some interesting bits (See our story). A survey that explores teachers’ attitudes about the roles that compensation and leadership play in their job satisfaction is interesting. (And it also touches on teachers’ attitudes about the proposed new common standards.) Check out AP’s story here and the Washington Post‘s here. The survey itself is here.

My colleague and co-blogger Erik Robelen has a piece on states’ progress adopting the various pieces of the agenda that Achieve believes is necessary to prepare all students for college and career. And the Alliance for Excellent Education, which advocates better high school policy, released its position on what the feds should think about when they reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act. (An alert observer notes, quite rightly, that the report was a joint release of the Alliance and the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind. My apologies.)

If your eyes aren’t glazed over yet, please take a look at this, too: a new study that found high school guidance counselors’ advice about college and career is very often not helpful to students. Inside Higher Ed’s story is here, and the New York Times’ story is here.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Curriculum Matters blog.