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Education Desk
The Education Desk is our education blog focusing on key areas of news coverage important to the state and its improvement. Evidence of public policy performance and impact will be reported and analyzed. We encourage you to engage in commenting and discussing the coverage of education from pre-natal to Higher Ed.Dusty Rhodes curates this blog that will provide follow-up to full-length stories, links to other reports of interest, statistics, and conversations with you about the issues and stories.About - Additional Education Coverage00000179-2419-d250-a579-e41d385d0000

Statewide School Webinar Planned For Next Week

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An internet event next week is aimed at reaching out to parents in the state. 
The Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois PTA have teamed up to offer their first Back To School webinar on Tuesday September 9.   It will feature the state superintendent and others giving parents more details about changes in schools.  That includes new learning standards and tests.

"Obviously it's a large and diverse state.  So this is one way of getting to parents and sharing with them some of the news.  So this is just another way to talk about how implementation of those standards is going," State Board spokeswoman Mary Fergus said.

New standardized tests this school year will replace the Prairie State Achievement Exam and the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.  The focus will be on having students explain answers, rather than simply picking the correct one.  

The state has also adopted new standards for Language Arts and Math. Work is underway to update those for Social Studies and the Arts.

The one hour webinar begins at 7 p.m. It's free and registration is available online.

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