News briefs

The state-appointed School Reform Commission’s recently announced plan to privatize most of the Philadelphia School District — the commission calls it “decentralization” — is drawing fire from teachers, parents and community members. If approved, the plan would close 64 neighborhood schools in the next five years and send thousands of students to charter schools.

High school students taught how to read historical documents with an eye to reconciling conflicting accounts of history significantly improved their understanding of history, retention of facts, and reading comprehension compared to similar students studying history using a traditional lecture and textbook approach, according to a study.

High housing costs and restrictive zoning practices block low-income students from attending schools that attain high average scores on state standardized tests because their parents cannot afford to live near such public schools, says a new national study from the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution.

District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson introduced a five-year strategic plan calling for higher-achieving public schools with longer days and better graduation rates, but she warned that paying for improvements will require closing some schools.

Almost two years into the federal Race to the Top program, states are spending their shares of the $4 billion prize at a snail’s pace.

The battle for Wisconsin has begun as four Democrats compete in the May 8 primary for the right to challenge Republican Gov. Scott Walker in a June 5 recall election. An extraordinary petition campaign mustered more than 900,000 voter signatures demanding his ouster after Walker effectively ended collective bargaining for nearly all public workers last year.

The Cleveland teachers union is battling the school superintendent’s plans to eliminate 600 of the city’s 4,000 teaching positions to help close next year’s budget deficit. As an incentive, the district is offering a cash bonus of 35 percent of a year’s pay to encourage teachers with at least 10 years on the job to retire. The remainder would be laid off.

Researchers studying the Philadelphia school district, which has taken a business-model approach to school reform for years, find that such policies have nearly eliminated opportunities for public oversight and that little attention is paid to systemic issues.

Poor schooling puts the nation’s security at risk because the nation’s public schools aren’t adequately preparing young people to “fill the ranks of the Foreign Service, the intelligence community, and the armed forces,” warns a Council of Foreign Relations task force headed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.