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Massachusetts

Anti-Common Core initiative moves one step closer to ballot

Voters in Massachusetts might be the first in the nation to weigh in directly on Common Core educational standards. Last week, End Common Core Massachusetts, a committee of citizen activists, teachers, and parents, announced that it has gathered over 30,000 signatures in support of placing Common Core on the

Massachusetts

The Common Core journalism blackout

Earlier this month, a deliberately anonymous teacher set forth some of the problems she saw in the Common Core-based test she had to give her students. This teacher argued — and provided anecdotal evidence to show — that the Common Core-based test: (1) is developmentally inappropriate; and (2) does not actually assess

Massachusetts

New Bedford presses parents to accept PARCC exams

NEW BEDFORD – School officials in this seaside city are pressing parents to allow their children to take the controversial PARCC exams, claiming that too many opt-outs of the Common Core-aligned tests may harm the district financially and otherwise. The controversy over the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and

MCAS

Committee forms to oppose Common Core ballot question

BOSTON – Former Fitchburg State University president Robert Antonucci will lead a new committee to fight a ballot question that would allow Massachusetts voters to weigh in on whether to repeal Common Core educational standards. The Committee to Protect Educational Excellence in Massachusetts plans to organize a coalition of Common Core

MCAS

Maine Common Core foes cross party lines to push repeal

AUGUSTA, Maine – A bipartisan group of Maine lawmakers is pushing a measure to repeal national education standards, known as Common Core, adopted by the state in 2011. State Rep. Will Tuell (R-East Machias) submitted a bill in late December that would replace Maine's Common Core standards by 2017.

Massachusetts

Second Common Core video released as Mass. considers dumping the federal standards

BOSTON – A second undercover video portraying Common Core as an exercise in profiteering by publishers including Boston textbook giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt surfaced Thursday, showing an executive of the company saying such education initiatives are "never about the kids." The video, from Project Veritas, a nonprofit journalism outfit

boston

Ballot group sees MCAS 2.0 as bid to ‘mollify our movement’

BOSTON — As Massachusetts school districts prepare for the MCAS 2.0 era to launch in the spring of 2017, ballot activists are pledging to undo the education standards behind one of the exams expected to influence the revamped student assessment test. In November, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary

MCAS

Obama signs education law rewrite shifting power to states

WASHINGTON (AP) — Calling it a "Christmas miracle," President Barack Obama signed a sweeping overhaul of the No Child Left Behind education law on Thursday, ushering in a new approach to accountability, teacher evaluations and the way the most poorly performing schools are pushed to improve. Joined by lawmakers,