CORE EAGLE
Last year, Alabama all-star Mary Scott Hunter was successfully reelected to the state’s board of education. In the wake of her victory, she’s got some free advice for Republican officeholders looking to set education policy: Don’t demagogue Common Core. “The platform of “No” is no longer enough. We need leaders who are able to articulate policies of upward mobility, accountability, and prudent governance,” she writes. Let’s hope her good sense rolls like a tide over the rest of the country.
GUESS THE STORK TAKES RETURN PASSENGERS
New analysis from Washington, D.C. chief financial officer confirms what many have long suspected: Once District-dwellers start having kids, they become more likely to leave town. According to tax records, the parents most likely to take their Baby Bjorns to Bethesda are middle-income earners who could likely afford city rents, but are disinclined to entrust their children’s education to the public school system. Of course, nobody knows the urban parent’s dilemma better than Fordham’s own marvelous Michael Petrilli, who literally wrote the book on the subject.
S'NO PROBLEM
Okay, so the big Northeast Snowpocalypse sequel was pretty badly overhyped (we still get to eat all the stockpiled pudding, yes?). It was still worth it to cancel school today: According to this great map from Vox, it can take as much as two feet of accumulation to give some New England kids a day of igloo-building. Meanwhile, New Yorker high schoolers don’t even get a week’s reprieve from the Regents exam. Some blizzard this turned out to be.
JAMMING THE PIPELINE
According to a recent op-ed by Gloria Romero and RiShawn Biddle, the U.S. “spends $228 billion on criminal justice because we badly spend $595 billion on our abysmal schools.” Romero and Biddle argue that the key to breaking the school-to-prison pipeline is to allocate these poorly spent education dollars to high-quality schools that all kids have access to. With more funding for excellent school choices, parents will have better luck at finding a school that meets their child’s needs—which can go beyond academics.
