Weekend Reads: What big-city superintendents actually do every day

  • Teach For America is 25. Here’s what it has accomplished and the questions it faces. (Education Week)
  • Chicago is laying off hundreds of central district employees today. (Sun-Times)
  • Educators used to use the “learning pyramid” to shape their teaching time. Not anymore. (Larry Cuban)
  • Pearson is cutting 4,000 jobs amid a shrinking college textbook market. The decline of PARCC testing can’t have helped. (Slate)
  • Los Angeles has used an algorithm to predict which kids might become criminals. (Pacific Standard)
  • What do big-city superintendents do every day? An answer from a district that just got a new one. (L.A. Times)
  • Look inside one effort to stem the chronic special education teacher shortage. (NPRed)
  • Teacher “sickouts” closed almost all Detroit public schools the day President Obama visited this week. (Free Press)
  • An inside look at Louisiana’s Common Core standards review, which has followed a now-familiar course. (Hechinger Report)
  • What school lunches look like for the children of professional chefs. (Bon Appetit)
  • In honor of Winter Storm Jonas, a reminder that snow day policy can say a lot about school districts’ priorities. (Chalkbeat)