The State Board of Education in California voted unanimously to prepare to apply for more flexible standardized testing options this year as nearly 80% of students across the state continue with distance learning.
States are required to conduct standardized tests every year in math, English language arts and science, according to both state laws and the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. When schools shut their buildings in March last year due to the pandemic, however, state officials said districts did not have to administer the tests, pending getting a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education under then-Secretary Betsy DeVos. The department quickly granted waivers to all states relieving them of their testing obligations.
Updated: 4:27 PM CST February 3, 2021
President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Miguel Cardona, the education commissioner for Connecticut and a former public school teacher, to serve as education secretary.
Cardona was appointed to the top education post in Connecticut just months before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March. When schools moved to remote learning, he hurried to deliver more than 100,000 laptops to students across the state. Since then, however, he has increasingly pressed schools to reopen, saying it s harmful to keep students at home.
If confirmed, his first task will be to expand that effort across the nation. Biden has pledged to have a majority of U.S. schools reopened by the end of his first 100 days in office. Biden is promising new federal guidelines on school opening decisions, and a “large-scale” Education Department effort to identify and share the best ways to teach during a pandemic.
LOGAN A new Utah State University policy gives victims of sexual misconduct another option for resolving cases that officials hope will encourage more students to report incidents.
The option, which was detailed by university leadership Thursday on an interim policy on sexual misconduct, will allow students to pursue an informal resolution, if desired, in addition to the formal complaint and investigation route already available. This new policy clarifies expectations for conduct for everyone in our university community, provides greater autonomy and more options for those who experience sexual misconduct, and lays out clear consequences for those whose conduct violates policy, the university said in a statement.
When voters selected Joe Biden as the next president, Juan Cisneros offered a lukewarm congratulations.
Cisneros, a 19-year-old computer science student at Benedictine University in Mesa, Arizona, is still fuming about immigration policy under former President Barack Obama, who oversaw a surge in deportations and was famously dubbed the “Deporter in Chief” by leading immigrant-rights groups. An undocumented immigrant who moved to the U.S. from Mexico on his 7th birthday, Cisneros accused the president-elect in November of taking Latinos for granted though his efforts to rally Arizona voter turnout likely helped Biden win that state.
But late on Dec. 22, Biden nominated Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona as the next U.S. education secretary, elevating to the nation’s top schools post a Puerto Rican educator who began his own schooling career unable to speak English. The nomination was met with praise from groups that represent Latinos and English language learne
The Daily Universe
By COLLIN BINKLEY, ALEXANDRA JAFFE and JONATHAN LEMIRE Associated Press
President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Miguel Cardona, Connecticut’s education chief and a lifelong champion of public schools, to serve as education secretary.
The selection delivers on Biden’s promise to nominate someone with experience working in public education and would fulfill his goal of installing an education chief who stands in sharp contrast to Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Unlike DeVos, a school choice advocate whom Biden says is an opponent of public schools, Cardona is a product of them, starting when he entered kindergarten unable to speak English.