Weekend Reads: Has it been five years already? Common Core marks anniversary

  • It’s the five-year anniversary of the Common Core, and to one reporter covering the shifting political winds around the standards, those years feel much longer. Curriculum Matters
  • Philadelphia’s city council passes a resolution urging the school district to mandate the teaching of cursive, prompting criticisms that the city should focus on the school budget crisis instead. Metro
  • The solution to educational inequity isn’t giving poor students more technology, one writer argues; it’s giving them more high-quality time with adults. The Atlantic
  • The stress that accompanies poverty can be just as harmful to young children’s developing brain as drug or alcohol abuse. The New Yorker
  • In California, parents say they are using the threat of the parent trigger law to prompt changes in schools rather than voting to turn a school over to a charter manager. The Hechinger Report
  • The Schools of Opportunity project’s Carol Burris and Kevin Welner praise a Jefferson County, Colo., school for its model of student-directed learning projects. Answer Sheet
  • Email correspondence between Jeb Bush and the U.S. Department of Education show that the former Florida governor offered to help the Obama administration re-authorize No Child Left Behind. Buzzfeed
  • Many experts believe that teaching nonacademic skills is vital to ensure students’ success, but there’s far less agreement on what those skills should be called. NPR Ed
  • Alexander Russo rounds up the different attitudes towards charter school backfill that the most prominent advocates, researchers, school districts and charter networks are taking. The Grade
  • When a parent feels a teacher is bullying their student, it can be hard to separate perceptions on both sides from reality, but there is some recourse. Voices of San Diego