Study: High School Test Terrain Shifting From Exit Exams to College Readiness
Education Week's Curriculum Matters Blog
Fewer students are being required to pass exit exams to graduate from high school, but high school testing is increasing because more states are requiring college- and career-readiness tests, according to a Center on Education Policy study. Under national pressure to prepare students for college and the workforce, states are beginning to lean on exams like the SATs and ACTs to assess readiness. The newness of this trend shows in the numbers: Of the 11 states that currently require, or plan to require, college-entrance exams, five started doing so as recently as 2009-10.More

NASSP Principals Build a School in the Dominican Republic
NASSP
NASSP members, including NASSP President Ken Griffith and NASSP Board Member Richard Snyder, recently returned from a weeklong humanitarian trip to Constanza, Dominican Republic, where they assisted in the construction of a school. Visit the Lifetouch Memory Mission — DR Facebook page to view photos and videos of the volunteers and local community members hard at work. And look to the January issue of NewsLeader for a full run-through of the trip.More

Webinar: Digital Learning Developments
Alliance for Excellent Education
On Friday, the Alliance for Excellent Education (AEE) hosted a webinar program that explored the digital learning imperative that faces schools today. The webinar, which can be viewed in the AEE archives, was moderated by Bob Wise, president of the Alliance and former governor of West Virginia, and featured Bob Farrace, senior director for communications and development at NASSP, and its panel of participants. The program is the first in a series designed to promote the first annual Digital Learning Day, scheduled for February 1, 2012.More

iPad Training for School Leaders
NASSP
Join your colleagues in Reston, VA, on February 20 or February 21, 2012 to discover how an iPad can help you become a more effective school leader. Training will be provided on the most valuable functions for educators, including: observations, evaluations, data collection, IEP checklists, research, news, and more. Registration includes a 16GB, 3G-ready iPad2, or you can bring your own. Seating is limited and the January workshops sold-out, so register soon.More

Apply Now for the NASSP Dissertation Award
NASSP
NASSP is now accepting applications and dissertation abstracts for the NASSP Dr. Ted Sizer dissertation competition. The awards seek to recognize outstanding dissertations focused on leadership research at the middle and high school levels. Open to doctoral students who have completed and successfully defended their dissertation between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011, the deadline to apply is January 12, 2012. Questions can be directed to Carolyn Glascock or 800-253-7746, ext. 202.More

Register for the Conference and Enter to Win a Cruise
NASSP
Register for the NASSP Breaking Ranks K-12 Conference by January 20, 2012, and you could win a four-day cruise for two on one of Carnival Cruise Lines' ships. The lucky winner can choose a sailing through May 6, 2013, out of popular ports such as Tampa, Miami, Los Angeles, and more. Treat yourself or a deserving staff member — it's transferable!More

Is Virtual Education Real Education?
The Principal Difference Blog
The Washington Post is writing about it; the NBC Nightly News broadcast of November 27 featured it. According to some people, the latest, best new thing in education is the virtual school. The concept is simple to explain but difficult to envision. In theory, students from grades K-12 will take all of their classes at a computer in a location of their choosing. While it is too early to make definitive evaluations of the success of virtual schools, there are some troubling numbers. While many aspects of the virtual school would be highly beneficial to all students, its tactics and goals are questionable at best. More

ED Releases Analysis of State Bullying Laws
The Huffington Post
Most states now have bullying laws that require schools to adopt bullying policies, and efforts to combat school bullying have escalated over the last decade, according to a report released by the US Department of Education. Between 1999 and 2010, more than 120 bills were adopted by state legislatures to introduce or amend legislation that address bullying, harassment or similar behavior in schools. By the time of the Education Department study's conclusion, there were 46 states with enacted anti-bullying laws, 36 with regulations that work against cyberbullying and 13 that give schools the authority to monitor and address bullying behavior even when it occurs off school grounds.More

Bad Online Behavior Jeopardizes Students' College Plans
Education Week
Stellar transcripts aside, students now have to worry about an increasing number of colleges peering at their social-networking pages online — and potentially denying their applications because of what they find there. The number of college-admissions officials using Facebook and other social-networking sites to learn more about applicants quadrupled over the past year, according to Kaplan Inc.More

YouTube for Schools Is Education Hub for the Digital Age
Mashable
YouTube is launching a brand new tool to help teachers and students get their learn on. "YouTube for Schools" is a portal that helps curate education materials and videos on subjects such as history and math while filtering out potentially offensive or distracting content. The site was created thanks to demand from teachers and schools across the country.More

What Real Education Reform Looks Like
Salon
As 2011 draws to a close, we can confidently declare that one of the biggest debates over education is — mercifully — resolved. We may not have addressed all the huge challenges facing our schools, but we finally have empirical data ruling out apocryphal theories and exposing the fundamental problems. We've learned, for instance, that our entire education system is not "in crisis," as so many executives in the for-profit education industry insist when pushing to privatize public schools. On the contrary, results from Program for International Student Assessment exams show that American students in low-poverty schools are among the highest-achieving students in the world.More

Opinion: The Excellence Gap
City Journal
If an out-of-control national debt weren't reason enough to worry about America's global competitiveness, here's another. Virtually all education reformers recognize that America's ability to remain an economic superpower depends to a significant degree on the number and quality of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians graduating from our colleges and universities—scientific innovation has generated as much as half of all US economic growth over the past half-century, on some accounts. But the number of graduates in these fields has declined steadily for the past several decades.More

As Budgets Get Stretched, Schools Turn to Free Digital Tools
eSchool News (free registration required)
Think of it as a welcome demand meeting an urgent need: Even as public school funding plummets, it's never been easier to find inexpensive or free high-quality education tools online. The digital revolution, which smashed old patterns of other traditional media, is radically changing what can be found in the average classroom. Teachers and school districts are turning online for teaching games, collaborative tools and even custom-made entire "textbooks."More

Report Shows Dual Enrollment Best When on College Campus
Education Week's College Bound Blog
New research from the National Center for Postsecondary Research at Teachers College, Columbia University, shows dual enrollment has strong positive effects on college enrollment and completion. But how much high school students can benefit from dual enrollment in college-level courses depends on the content of the course and where it takes place.More

Friendly Advice For Teachers: Beware Of Facebook
NPR
The new and ever-changing world of social networking has blurred the lines between private and public, work and personal, friend and stranger. It's becoming a particular challenge for teachers who can quickly rile students and parents by posting comments or photos online. In some cases, teachers have been fired for statements they've made on Facebook, which is raising free speech issues. More

Guidance on Use of Race Gets Polarized Response
Education Week
Civil rights advocates and opponents of affirmative action are sharply divided on the wisdom — and legal soundness — of new Obama administration guidance to schools and colleges on how much flexibility they have in considering the race of students in areas such as attendance zones and admissions. The guidance was released after more than two years of lobbying by civil rights groups, which argued that a similar document issued by the US Department of Education's office for civil rights in 2008, under President George W. Bush, did not faithfully advise schools and colleges on the permissible uses of race under the relevant US Supreme Court decisions.More

Do Teachers Really Come From the 'Bottom Third' of College Graduates?
The Washington Post
The conventional wisdom among many education commentators is that US public school teachers "come from the bottom third" of their classes. Most recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took this talking point a step further, and asserted at a press conference that teachers are drawn from the bottom 20 percent of graduates. All of this is supposed to imply that the US has a serious problem with the "quality" of applicants to the profession. Despite the ubiquity of the "bottom third" and similar arguments, it's unclear how many of those who offer them know what specifically they refer to. More

Florida Representative Proposes Bill to Ax Middle School Phys. Ed.
The Huffington Post
Florida lawmakers are considering a bill to eliminate a requirement that the state's 6th through 8th graders must take one semester of physical education each year. The proposal aims to allow localities to decide whether gym classes should be offered in their middle schools, and doesn't necessarily discourage physical education, Republican state Rep. Larry Metz — the bill's sponsor, wrote in an email to ABC News.More