Education News from Washington Post

George Wood is retiring this year after serving as principal of Federal Hocking Secondary School in Stewart, Ohio, for 21 years. He will stay on as superintendent of the Federal Hocking District. Wood is a nationally known author, educator, activist and school reform leader, and founder of the Forum for Education and Democracy. This is his last weekly letter to his staff.

How's this for a trick? Jeb Bush's "Chiefs for Change," a group of former and current state education superintendents, have attacked American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten for something she didn't say -- without even mentioning her name!

An annual national survey of school curriculum concludes that there is a "large gap" between how high school teachers perceive their graduating students' readiness for college and what professors expect freshmen to know.

A CNN video:

In this CNN story, second-grade teacher Tammy Glasgow talks about the Oklahoma tornado that demolished her school, Briarwood Elementary. Nobody died in the school, thanks to the efforts of the teachers. The story says in part:

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A higher education consulting firm had a blunt message for the University of Virginia’s governing board Tuesday: Despite the university’s vaunted stature as a “public Ivy,” school and state leaders have been complacent in the past 15 years and U-Va. is now falling behind many of its competitors.

When the gavel is struck and Thursday’s Fairfax County School Board meeting is adjourned one fact will be certain: the district’s teachers will earn raises next year.

The question board members will face as they finalize the fiscal year 2014 budget is how exactly to fund those pay increases.

Meridian Public Charter School officials have said that are continuing to examine allegations of test-tampering at the school and have not yet disciplined any staff members.

Meridian was among four charter schools that the Office of the State Superintendent flagged last month for cheating on 2012 standardized tests. Five classrooms — representing more than 40 percent of tested students -- were implicated.

The head of a major teachers union fired back Tuesday at state education officials who had dismissed her call for a moratorium on stakes associated with new standardized state tests in public schools.

Some students staged a quiet protest at Columbia University Teachers College commencement ceremonies Tuesday in New York to express their unhappiness with the choice of Merryl Tisch as a speaker and award recipient.

Here's a video from "Today" about how a teacher saved some children when the massive tornado struck Moore, Okla., and the transcript:

Reporter: You know, there have been some amazing stories of survival that are starting to emerge from the rubble and I have one of those, Brandi Klein, Damien Klein and Bobby Britain. Damien, you're a fourth-grader at Plaza Tower Elementary School. Do you remember anything from yesterday?

Damien: We were in class and all we heard was the sirens go off and we all ran to the hallway. Some of us had a math book, some of us had backpacks and they went off again. Then we ducked again and then it went off and then we went in the bathroom, and then they went off again and then we heard the tornado and it sounded like a train coming by, and then we all, we were all covered and a teacher took cover of us, Miss [Rhonda] Crossway.

Reporter: Miss Crossway threw her body right over you, didn't she?

Damien: Yes.

Reporter: Was she covering you and some other students?

Damien: She was covering me and my friend, Zachary, and then she, I told her that we were fine because we were holding onto something and she went over to my friend Antonio and covered him, and then so she saved our lives.

Reporter: She did save your lives. How long do you remember being under the teacher? How long did it feel like for the tornado to pass over you?

Damien: About five minutes

The race to enlist the world’s universities in the movement for free online education accelerated Tuesday as the Web site edX announced that it has added 15 new schools, more than doubling the size of the venture, with new partners from Asia, Europe and Australia.

Montgomery County schools superintendent Joshua P. Starr, last week, tapped one of Prince George’s County public schools’ top administrators to be his new chief of staff. But Andrew Zuckerman, who starts in Montgomery next month, wasn’t the only person appointed to a new job in the district.

Many elementary schools to create ability-group classrooms in an attempt to better prepare kids to meet the Common Core State Standards. In the following post, Joanne Yatvin explains why this is a problem. She is a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English and now she supervises student teachers for Portland State University and writes books for teachers.

The D.C. Public Charter School Board on Monday approved two new schools and rejected seven others, citing concerns such as inconsistent budgets and overly vague academic goals and curricula.

“We’re setting a tough, high bar,” said Chairman John H. “Skip” McKoy, speaking at the outset of the board’s evening meeting. “Running these schools is a really arduous task, and we’re getting a little bit better at spotting red lights — things that are signs to us that a proposal is not quite ready.”

White House officials say they didn't tell President Obama about an impending IRS scandal, and nobody told him the Justice Department secretly subpoenaed reporters' phone records, and exactly what he knew when about the Benghazi controversy is unclear. This, then, seems like a good time to ask: How much has the president been told about the unfortunate effects his education reform policies are having on public schools?

A small group of state education officials is pushing back against a call by teachers unions for a moratorium on using standardized tests for evaluating students or teachers until states have completely implemented Common Core standards, a new way of teaching math and reading in grades kindergarten through 12th.

The University of Maryland's English Department held its commencement ceremonies on Monday and student Jamie Lee gave the following unusually honest speech in which she concedes that she once thought going to College Park was beneath her and that studying English was a self-indulgent exercise. Here's her speech:

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The University of Virginia Board of Visitors unanimously elected Richmond businessman William H. Goodwin Jr. as its vice rector Monday evening, putting him on course to lead the board starting in 2015.

Three more states have received waivers from the U.S. Department of Education to free them from many of the requirements of No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era federal education law.

Alaska, Hawaii and West Virginia join 37 other states and D.C. in getting relief from No Child Left Behind, in exchange for agreeing to make changes in education policy endorsed by the Obama administration. The states have agreed to prepare students for college and career, better focus aid on the neediest students and boost effective teaching and school leadership, according to the administration.

The District plans to allow public charter schools to enter into long-term leases for a dozen old public school buildings, some of which are traditional public schools that are slated to close by next year, Mayor Vincent C. Gray said Monday.