First Bell: 2-21-13

yes Pamela Tatz / February 21, 2013

A first look at today's most important education news:

The 29th annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher revealed that job dissatisfaction among teachers is at a twenty-five-year low and that a third of the surveyed principals are “likely to go into a different occupation” within the next five years. Teachers feel prepared to teach the Common Core but are less sure that the standards will improve student achievement. (HechingerEd, Education Week, Curriculum Matters, and Huffington Post)

Nearly a third of the country’s public high school graduating class of 2012 took at least one AP test, and one in five students passed. Florida—whose students took 10 percent of all AP exams given and whose students passed at a rate of 27 percent—was a notable highlight. (New York Times and Wall Street Journal)

As promised, Governor Cuomo announced a plan for the state to establish a new teacher-evaluation system for New York City if Bloomberg and the teacher union fail to do so by May 31. (New York Times and Wall Street Journal)

The GED exam will conform with Common Core standards by January 2014 and likely have two cutoff scores—one representing a high school diploma and one representing college readiness. And two competing tests (from ETS and McGraw-Hill) are in the works. (Wall Street Journal)

Coursera, an online-education provider, has partnered with twenty-nine more schools—several of which are international. (Wall Street Journal)

Category: First Bell