What's Sequestration, And Why Should You Care About It? The good folks at Politics K-12 have a lengthy, 12-part explainer on sequestration and schools.
Union Leader Busted In Mexico? The head of Mexico's teachers union has been detained for embezzlement charges, reports the Associated Press. Plastic surgery, a private plane and Neiman Marcus -- these are things the government is alleging that union chief Elba Esther Cordillo paid for with union funds. Yikes!
More Common Core Resistance? Over at the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss has started a series of guest posts featuring opponents of the Common Core State Standards in states such as Indiana and Alabama that are rebelling against the learning tools they once adopted. The first one features Indiana's Russ Pulliam, who says "[Glenda] Ritz soundly defeated the state's biggest advocate of Common Core, Tony Bennett. Republican leaders in the General Assembly will ignore that election result at their future political peril."
Worse Than A Snow Day? Yesterday, 60 students and their teachers were stranded at a Colorado high school during a blizzard, reports ABC. But don't worry, they're all safe and they have supplies!
Introducing CSTUY Meet Mike Zamansky. He's a teacher at New York City's storied Stuyvesant High School who, according to BetaBeat, has been "lobbying for more rigorous computer science training in the city's public schools" for the last several years. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been tossing around some science and technology initiatives for schools, but Zamansky thinks that "the cooler endgame would be having teachers that know technology." He's taking things into his own hands by launching CSTUY, a program that would expand his schoolwide programing across the city.
KIPP To The Top? As we report, the learning advantage the Knowledge Is Power Program charter school network provides students has been reaffirmed by yet another study. But some still ask, is it scalable?