On this date in 1963 Alcatraz closed. Not so well known, it had a pretty robust CTE initiative.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos defended the President’s budget to an audience of state officials yesterday. I listened but still basically think this.

Behind the scenes more and more people shifting from “give DeVos a chance” to “this isn’t going to work.” In a town where perceptions can become reality she needs to get in front of that.

This story has a lot going on: The teachers union official doing double duty in the state legislature is just a small piece of it – and a more common story than you might think. We also have people who thought the states would just jump at the ESSA opportunity to do cool things learning otherwise, our cargo cult approach to things – project-based learning! – plus our field’s aversion to difficult conversations, and more. So it’s basically why we can’t have nice things in one bundle.

Education got a cameo in the Gorsuch hearing.

NASBE with some questions you might want to ask about your state ESSA plan. DeVos is basically saying, do what you want! One former state officials said after her talk to CCSSO yesterday that the key standard for whether a state plan passes muster seems to be whether it has enough postage to get to D.C. (but presumably not with these stamps).

Bellwether will be reviewing state plans as they come in and highlighting really strong and really ineffective proposals – stay tuned for that.

Arne Duncan says keep OCR. Will we see some creative policy ideas in the post-NCLB, post-ESSA regs world?

This looks like an interesting event on accountability design. 

Sadly, soon after they arrived they watched it fly straight into a wind turbine. Hey kids, Red Bull + vodka = trouble. Rabbit punches back.