Scroll down for jobs and fish pics. Including jobs and fish pics at Bellwether.

Also at BW: Here’s Ashley Mitchell with some reactions and takeaways from the new KIPP pre-k study. And here’s Sara Mead in USN on the 3-k gap.

Chad Aldeman and Kirsten Schmitz on the evolving teacher pension scene and changes to plan design.

Justin Trinidad has ideas on what teachers can do during the DACA uncertainty – and more generally.

Elsewhere:

Two things jump out from yesterday’s Marc Sternberg op-ed in The Times about the New York Absent Teacher Reserve pool. First, it’s really a horrendous policy and because these teachers won’t end up in schools with more affluent kids it shows just how grotesque the equity situation/conversation in education really is. Second, it’s 2017! It’s amazing we’re still talking about this and it’s not resolved. The best that New York Chancellor Farina could muster was to say of this pool of educators that, “some are actually okay.” That’s probably true, and some now how a scarlet letter on them, but the data Sternberg musters is stunning and, in any event, we can do better.

Speaking of equity – read this article and the analysis underlying it.

Mike Petrilli and Brandon Wright criticize Virginia’s ESSA plan – which is no great shakes. But they seem concerned Virginia will focus too much on helping underachieving students. That doesn’t seem like a big risk given educational outcomes in the Commonwealth and the persistent lack of attention to these students. Better safe than sorry, I guess?

Here’s another article about teacher shortages. Something we’ve talked about in the past is how these stories should come with a disclaimer about teacher credentialing today. Other than tossing warm bodies into the classroom – which you should not do – the rest of the credentialing strategies are more or less a wash in terms of impact on student learning. “Lowering the bar” rhetoric freaks out parents but the bar isn’t really meaningful now, so innovating with ways to get more teachers isn’t crazy against that backdrop.

Betsy DeVos is reopening Title IX campus sexual assault policy. Or more precisely opening it since she apparently intends to use the regulatory process rather than guidance letters to make policy about requirements for how schools handle this. It’s awkward, given that the President seems to be an admitted sexual abuser. DeVos is a lighting rod in general. And everyone is pretty edgy right now. Still, while almost everyone agrees campus sexual assault is a serious problem, the reactionary Trump context is obscuring some complicated questions about how the Obama policy is playing out. Emily Yoffe digs into that in Slate. And, as on several other high-profile social issues there are also court cases pending that may in the end have as much or more impact as anything the administration does.

Interesting interview with Lowell Milken and Vicki Phillips.

And an interesting teacher salary analysis from Brookings.

Paul Hill on David Osborne’s new book and some of the intellectual history around their ideas.

Complicated issues around teachers as product ambassadors and influencers. This is an old story but with clicks a new ed tech flavor to it.

People, teachers and others, tend to assume the legal protection provided by teachers unions for teachers is bulletproof. That’s not the case.

Here’s some food for thought about elite higher education and the rest of the country. And here’s more to chew over about land grant colleges and economic development.  Justin Fox says we’re getting too comfortable with America’s higher education reputation.

Buzzy Kalman says innovate less and execute better more in K-12 schools.

Here is your daily dose of adorable via Harlem Village Academies.

Have a wonderful weekend and if you’re in the southeast, stay safe.