National

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has a very different educational landscape, and it's one that many students, parents, and educators are unhappy about. A recent conference sent out a strong warning to other cities that "relinquishment" reform policies, in which the state takes over local school districts and replaces "failing" public schools with chartered ones, hurts children and communities—and, unfortunately, these takeovers are spreading rapidly across the country.

Pedro Noguera, a professor at New York University, outlines a clear direction for Mayor de Blasio and progressive school reform efforts in his latest op-ed. Noguera emphasizes that although de Blasio has made progress in some educational areas, he needs to create a clearer narrative of change in order to inspire communities to support and build on that progress.

In mid-July, the Massachusetts-based Student Immigrant Movement led hundreds of students and allies in the fight for in-state tuition for undocumented students during a hearing before the state's Joint Committee on Education.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's annual publication, The KIDS COUNT 2015 Data Book, collects data from all 50 states and uses it to evaluate how kids across the U.S. are faring in terms of their health, education, economic well-being, and family and community. The 2015 report shows that although some gains have been made, there are still many areas for concern—particularly for children of color.

Last year, parents, students, teachers, and community members in Los Angeles achieved a huge victory for the city’s public schools: they successfully pushed the LA school board to adopt the “Equity Is Justice Resolution," which will guide the distribution of new state funding to prioritize the highest-needs students and schools.

Media Mobilizing Project has created an amazing new project to share the personal stories of parents, students and educators in Philadelphia's public schools. Their website, "Voices from our Public Schools" collects these stories to create a larger narrative around why people love their public schools and how they feel Pennsylvania's budget cuts to education have hurt them.

The first installment in the Schott Foundation's Grassroots Education Series is a webinar on branding, communications and social media with Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation.

Graduating high school doesn't always mean that students are ready for college. To address this fact, the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy has released a new policy brief that provides one concrete way to help prepare students: early college programming in high schools.

In a column for the Education Opportunity Network, blogger Jeff Bryant paints a stark picture of how state budget fights are decimating public schools and stripping them of the resources they need to support students and teachers.

This week over 175 civil rights and education groups signed on to a letter asking legislators to abandon the high-stakes testing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act's most recent iteration, No Child Left Behind. Written by Jitu Brown, the National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, the letter joins the debate surrounding ESEA, and specifically, the debate over the role of testing and accountability in ESEA.