America Succeeds Updates

America Succeeds Updates: March 2020

“Classrooms of Tomorrow” Event Recap

At our recent “Classrooms of Tomorrow” event, we partnered with edmentum, Getting Smart, Microsoft, and Teague to shine a light on the innovation of agile educators, broadening the coalition of support, and thoughtfully bringing business influence to bear in scaling their impacts to reach even more students.

We’re excited about what lies ahead! Read more about the event in this blog post.

Affiliate Updates

Idaho Business for Education

It took the House five weeks to repeal math, English, and science standards. It took the Senate 35 minutes to pass them.

Voting unanimously, the Senate Education Committee approved nearly 150 page­s of education rules — including the hotly debated academic standards.

For more than 15,000 educators statewide, it means they will continue to use the same standards as a roadmap to teach Idaho’s 300,000 K-12 students. And for legislators, it means they will continue to haggle over possible changes in the standards — for the rest of the 2020 session, and beyond.

IBE has long supported the standards because they raise the bar for what students should master and they increase the rigor to better prepare students to succeed in postsecondary education and the workforce. 

Aligned

Recently, the Missouri House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education heard HB 2435 (Swan), a bill that expands the Visiting Scholars teaching certificate and allows subject matter experts without formal educator credentials to teach courses that lead to career pathways in public schools. The current law limits the Visiting Scholars certificate to individuals working in schools with business-education partnership programs, like CAPS (Center for Advanced Professional Studies), for a maximum of three years. HB 2435 expands the certificate to any career pathway course and extends the limit to five years. 

During her testimony, Representative Kathy Swan said, “The teacher shortage is a national phenomenon and it’s not that qualified people don’t exist – it’s that they are simply deciding not to be teachers, or they are getting out of the field early.” 

Aligned’s Linda Rallo and The Missouri Chamber of Commerce testified in support of the bill.

Arkansas Learns

#SchoolChoice Film: The Miss Virginia movie is by Arkansas Native and Arkansas Cinema Society Award-winning Director R.J. Daniel Hanna. It’s his first feature based on the life of Little Rock’s own Virginia Fowler Walden Ford and her fight for her son and the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Screenings have been happening throughout Arkansas and more are scheduled in the near future.

Watch the movie trailer here.

Affiliate Member Feature

We’re excited to support a growing army of business leaders across the country helping move the needle on student outcomes. #PowerofaNetwork

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