(National) Education Politics 
You know it’s amazing news when The Guardian publishes it one minute after midnight in the new year: “Toby Young to help lead government’s new universities regulator.” Happy New Year, England! And congrats on being first off the blocks to fuck up education in 2018! “Who’s Toby Young?” Americans wonder. Well… Ask any of your British education colleagues. They’ll tell ya.
Via Buzzfeed: “A New Betsy DeVos Proposal Would Make It Much Tougher For Students To Get Loan Forgiveness.”
Via The Washington Post: “Elizabeth Warren wants the Education Dept.’s use of earnings data investigated.”
More on how the GOP tax plan will effect universities (particularly those with large endowments) in Inside Higher Ed.
Via Edsurge: “After Net Neutrality, Experts Expect Changes to FCC’s E-Rate.”
Former English minister of education David Laws on “Liberia’s big school experiment.”
(State and Local) Education Politics 
Via The Baltimore Sun: “Baltimore teachers call on city to close all schools amid heating issues.” More via NPR.
Via The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Two-plus hours on a school bus: How a Chester charter taps Philly kids to grow.”
Via CJonline.com: “Kansas GOP making moves to prepare for April vote on K–12 constitutional amendment” – this would rewrite "the state’s obligation to educate public school children."
Via The New York Times: “Met Changes 50-Year Admissions Policy: Non-New Yorkers Must Pay.”
Via The New York Times: “City of the Future? Humans, Not Technology, Are the Challenge in Toronto.”
Immigration and Education 
Via The New York Times: “As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting.”
Via ProPublica: “Trump Justice Department Pushes for Citizenship Question on Census, Alarming Experts.”
Education in the Courts 
Via Complex: “Federal Court Says High School Football Player Can’t Be Forced to Stand for National Anthem.”
Via Education Week: “Ohio Supreme Court to Hear Online Charter School Funding Dispute.”
Via The New York Times: “School Soccer Coach in California Charged With Trafficking Teenage Girls.”
The Business of Financial Aid 
The Washington Post looks at income sharing agreements.
There’s more about the politics of the business of student loans in the federal education above. And the business of student loans is off to a strong start in 2018 with fundraising news in the venture capital section below.
The “New” For-Profit Higher Ed 
For-profit colleges bought and sold in the “business of education” section below. And more too on accreditation for for-profits in the accreditation section below.
Online Education (and the Once and Future “MOOC”) 
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has joined edX.
There’s data about distance education enrollments in the US in the research section below.
Meanwhile on Campus… 
Via The Atlantic: “The Future of Trumpism Is on Campus.”
Accreditations and Certifications and Competencies 
Via Inside Higher Ed: “Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade group for the for-profit college sector, this week called on the U.S. Congress to give colleges that are accredited by an agency the Obama administration terminated more time to find a new accreditor.”
Testing 
“Is the Smarter Balanced National Test Broken?” asks Education Dive, which I suppose is a question that should put this story into the Betteridge’s Law of Headlines section.
Via EdWeek’s Market Brief: “Feds Set Stage for ESSA ‘Innovative’ Testing Pilots. But States, Vendors May Move Slowly.”
Go, School Sports Team! 
Via NPR: “Training For The Olympics Is Hard Enough. Try Doing That While Earning A Degree.”
Via Inside Higher Ed: “The University of Arizona has fired its head football coach, Rich Rodriguez, following allegations by his former administrative assistant that Rodriguez sexually harassed her.”
There’s sports-related news in the courts section above.
Memos from HR 
Via The Guardian: “Google faces new discrimination charge: paying female teachers less than men.”
More hiring and firing news in the sports section above.
Contests and Awards 
From Chalkbeat: “Why we decided to launch the Great American Teach-Off, and how it will work.”
“I Have Big Reservations About Chalkbeat’s Teaching Competition,” says Dan Meyer.
Upgrades and Downgrades 
Via The New York Times: “How Climate Change Deniers Rise to the Top in Google Searches.”
Via Vanity Fair: “‘Oh My God, This Is So F—ed Up’: Inside Silicon Valley’s Secretive, Orgiastic Dark Side.” Good thing no one in Silicon Valley is trying to shape the future of education, otherwise this story would be even more horrific.
Teachers didn't choose a career where they expected to have bullets flying at them...unfortunately, that's becoming a reality. pic.twitter.com/bThvHTXGYD
— Gizmodo (@Gizmodo) January 3, 2018
Yes, this is ed-tech. Weapons training and metal detectors are ed-tech. School furnaces are also ed-tech. Perhaps if we paid attention to more than just the venture-backed gadgetry and philanthropy-backed stories about “innovation,” we could work towards schools that were actually safer and more just.
The Atlantic on Logan Paul: “The Social-Media Star and the Suicide.”
Via The Guardian: “Neurotechnology, Elon Musk and the goal of human enhancement.”
Via Mindwires Consulting’s Michael Feldstein: “Good Enough vs. Better Enough: The Macmillan Example.”
Robots and Other Ed-Tech SF 
From the Amazon PR department: “University of Oklahoma Expands Student Engagement with Alexa Skills.”
Venture Capital and the Business of Ed-Tech 
The private school provider Taaleem has raised $14 million from Amanat Holdings.
Frank has raised $10 million from Reach Capital,Aleph, and Apollo Global Management. “A TurboTax for student loan applications” according to Techcrunch, the company has raised $15.5 million total.
The private equity firm KKR has sold its stake in Weld North Education to another private equity firm, Silver Lake. Edsurge reports that Weld North Education will still be run by former Kaplan exec Jonathan Grayer.
The for-profit chain of colleges Education Corporation of America has acquired the for-profit chain of colleges Vatterott Educational Centers.
Privacy, Surveillance, and Information Security 
Via Ars Technica: “‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’: Every modern processor has unfixable security flaws.”
Via Buzzfeed: “India’s National ID Database With Private Information Of Nearly 1.2 Billion People Was Reportedly Breached.”
Via The Times Leader: “Sutton Elementary School will be implementing a pilot program next school year that will digitally scan student fingerprints in an effort to make food lines more efficient.” The school is in Owensboro, Kentucky. Good thing is if this system gets breached, the school will just issue kids new fingerprints.
Via Edsurge: “Measuring Learning Will Be Key to Improving It in 2018.” Featuring this gem: “The most obvious sign that measuring learning is not a priority in higher-ed is that administrators and educators throw away so much data about it.”
Via The 74: “How One Program Is Closing the College Persistence Gap for Needy Students With Financial Aid, Social Supports, and a Powerful Data Tracker.”
Research, “Research,” and Reports 
Via NPR: “Many Large Public Universities Don’t Collect Data On Suicides, Report Finds.”
Via Mindwires Consulting’s Phil Hill: “Fall 2016 IPEDS First Look: Continued growth in distance education in US.”
Via Inside Higher Ed: “New Data on Enrollments, Employees, Libraries.”
From Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum: “What we’ve learned: 5 lessons from education research to take into 2018.”
Via The Hechinger Report: “Rival studies shed light on the merits of a Montessori education.”
Icon credits: The Noun Project