NASBE recently submitted written testimony to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee regarding President Obama’s FY2013 budget proposal.

The Obama Administration has scheduled a National Youth Summit in Washington, DC for February 26 to convene youth leaders to help shape strategies to provide pathways for all youth to be on track to achieve high school and postsecondary credentials. The summit will share what students have indicated to the Department, provide additional youth the [...]

The Department has scheduled a labor-management conference for February 15 and 16 in Denver for leaders of school districts and labor unions from across the country to identify ways that collaborative labor-management relationships, policies, and agreements can directly drive academic achievement. The Department invited about 2,000 districts that secured federal funding in the past year [...]

The NCES updated its websites on rural and urban education. The websites, which draw primarily from data collected by NCES and the Census Bureau, compiles and disseminates data on rural and urban education in four general areas: 1) students, 2) teachers, 3) school environment, and 4) finances. Examples of specific topics within these areas are [...]

The NCES released a technical brief entitled Statistical Methods for Protecting Personally Identifiable Information in Aggregate Reporting to help state and local officials protect student privacy through their statewide longitudinal data systems. The technical brief examines what protecting student privacy means in a reporting context. NCES concludes that even though aggregated data is reported to the public [...]

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is scheduled to release The Nation’s Report Card for science January 25 for students in grades 4, 8, and 12 in 2009. NAEP will announce the results via live web event at 11:00 a.m. (ET) athttp://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard. The Nation’s Report Card: Science 2009 is a product of the National Center for Education Statistics [...]

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)  U.S. Department of Education released new state-level data on the state adoption of common core standards in English language arts and mathematics, as well as state adoption of compulsory school attendance laws and exemptions. The new data can be found on the State Education Reforms website athttp://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/. The [...]

The Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) released a list of schools receiving SIG funding (http://www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/sig-awarded-schools.pdf), as well as its latest SIG Newsletter (http://www.ed.gov/oese-news/school-turnaround-newsletters), linking states and districts with resources and tools that will help them turn around persistently lowest-achieving schools.

NASBE leadership is scheduled to participate in the International Summit on the Teaching Profession scheduled for March 16-17 in New York City to work on the following objectives: Emphasize the importance of the teaching profession; Identify and share the world’s best practices in recruiting, preparing, supporting, developing, evaluating, compensating, and retaining teachers; Examine teacher engagement [...]

The Department released a technical assistance memo for state and local officials to combat bullying inside and outside of schools. The memo outlines critical components of strong state bullying laws and policies and is intended to serve as a useful reference for state and local officials developing or revising anti-bullying legislation or policies. The Department compiled [...]