by Kimberly Hefling, AP Education WriterWASHINGTON (AP) — ACT test takers take note: The No. 2 pencil is losing its cachet. Greater numbers of high school students will be able to take the college entrance exam on a computer next year.The ACT announced Friday that computer-based testing will be available next year in the 18 states and additional districts that require students, typically juniors, to take the ACT during the school day. About 1 million students could be affected.Read the rest of the story at U.S. News and World Report.

Study finds some study areas pay more than others, with engineering earnings triple those for educationby Melissa KornWant to make a good living? Go to college. Just be careful what you major in.On average, college graduates earn about $1 million more in their lifetimes than do adults who only completed high school. But long-term earnings prospects vary widely by subject, and the income differentials across certain majors dwarf those between graduates and non-graduates, according to a new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce based on an analysis of Census Bureau data.Read the rest of the story at The Wall Street Journal.

by Valerie StraussWhen John Oliver, on his HBO “Last Week” show, did a recent segment on the problems with standardized testing, the one company that he mentioned at some length was Pearson — and that’s no surprise. Pearson is the largest education company in the world (Forbes magazine says it may control up to 60 percent of the U.S. testing market), and it has become a high-profile target of opponents of high-stakes standardized testing.Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.

Almost every state has been sued for not investing enough in education, especially in poorer districts. But localities may be more to blame.by Mary Ellen McIntireWhat’s the right amount to spend on schools to get the best outcomes?The average spending per student in school districts around the country decreased in 2011 — the latest year that data is available — and began years of declining expenditures, according to an April report on K-12 funding by State Policy Reports.Read the rest of the story on Governing.

by Jennifer GreenOver the last two weeks, teachers in Baltimore have worked tirelessly to support their students, their schools and their community. I have two words for them: thank you.Ashley Smith, a fourth grade teacher at Lakeland Elementary/Middle School in Southwest Baltimore, used her classroom as a safe harbor where her students could openly express their reactions to the Baltimore riots through their writing. “I knew the students would be coming into class… with a lot of questions about what had taken place,” she told ABC News. Ashley relied on her skills as an educator to encourage an open, healthy dialogue among her students. She not only gave them a space to share their feelings by writing essays, but also established an open communication channel between peers. It was through this channel that her students’ discussed the power of peaceful protests and the tragedies that often result from violent uprisings.Read …

On April 27, a 16-year-old boy allegedly fired two shots inside North Thurston High School in Lacey, Washington. He probably never expected what happened next: He was tackled by teacher Brady Olson.Olson put his life on the line to save his students. When everyone ran away from the shooter, Olson ran toward the shooter to stop him.The popular civics teacher is being hailed as a hero. But in a statement released to the press, he said, “As always, students come first, and today was no different.”This happens over and over again. We see and hear stories of teacher heroics on a nearly regular basis. But whether they are standing between attackers and students, listening to students’ heartbreaking stories, or finding lunch money for a kid who has none, teacher heroics are more common than we realize.To be sure, like any other profession, education has its share of incompetence. There are …

by Eryn Brown and Teresa WatanabeSince state laws made it harder for California elementary school kids to get their hands on sugary drinks and junk food snacks on campus, researchers found, students’ risk of becoming overweight or obese fell slightly — but mostly if they came from higher-income neighborhoods.Examining body mass index measurements of 2,700,880 fifth-graders in the state over 10 years, researchers found that students in those neighborhoods saw their odds of exceeding a healthy weight fall by about 1% a year. For all other students, the trends remained essentially flat.Read the rest of the story on the L.A. Times. 

MOOCs: A Revolutionary PerspectiveJoin us for an online Town Hall with Gordon Rogers on Wednesday May 6th from 10:00am – 11:00am ESTA number of parallels exist between the new frontier of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their recognition as “academic currency” and the fate of the doomed Continental, the currency of the American colonies. Just as the revolutionary banknotes lacked credibility, the assessment instruments used by students to prove knowledge and mastery of MOOCs continue to face an uphill battle for authenticity. Until these issues are overcome, online education will be, in the eyes of many, “not worth a Continental”.But efforts are underway to achieve wider recognition and acceptance of alternative forms of credentialing. They are taking place in universities, community colleges and coding “boot-camps.” They generally fall into a framework known as “Competency Based Education” (CBE), representing the first significant step in the unbundling of American higher education. …

by Issie LapowskiSO YOU’RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend’s neighbor’s sister. It’s prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools—with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning—just aren’t cutting it.At the same time, you’re thinking: this school is kind of weird.Read the rest of the story at Wired.

Last week’s events in Baltimore did not start the race discussions and teachable moments for the students and faculty at Washington Latin PCS in Washington, D.C., they continued them. The community, lead by Head of School Martha Cutts, has been facing the issue of race head on using its “classical education for the modern world” as its foundation.

by Kyla Calvert Mason

by Leila Meyer

Discover who is truly responsible for bad data use in education and how better data systems and clear reporting can improve decision-making for educators.

by Josh ZumbrunMuch has been written about millennials–the nickname for the generation of young people born in the 1980s and 1990s–and the rough time they’ve had in the economy. But now that the generation is getting older, and  the oldest millennials are in their mid-30s by some definitions, an increasing number are parents themselves.A new report from Konrad Mugglestone, a policy analyst at Young Invincibles, a Washington-based group that represents the interests of young Americans, has dived into the data on millennial parents (defined in this report as those ages 18 to 34).Read the rest of the story on the Wall Street Journal site.

Rebecca Winthrop from the Brookings Institution notes that the differences between the developed and developing worlds in education remain stark.