Last week, the NY Times featured a lengthy piece on teacher mentorship programs, entitled, “As Apprentices in Classroom, Teachers Learn What Works.”

We pay close attention to state legislation on teacher evaluation. We have to. Lately, it seems that the tide has turned dramatically against the inclusion of student test results as part of teacher evaluation. For example, Missouri voters resoundingly voted down Missouri Teacher Performance Evaluation Amendment 3, which proposed to increase the use of testing, and Michigan’s state legislature introduced two bills (H.B. 5223 and 5224), which decrease reliance on standardized testing, and are receiving broad bipartisan support.

By now you’ve heard about the brouhaha over Time’s apple-smashing cover story onVergara v. California. Time has posted a number of thoughtful responses, all worth reading. Randi Weingarten’s is especially notable, and is neatly summarized with her closing paragraph:

In the spirit of Connected Educator Month, we invite our colleagues in edtech to share how they’ve given back, whether personally or as a company, to the community of connected educators. Just use hashtag #cem14 and mention us so we can catalog it for a future blog post!

Politico’s recent piece “Rating Teachers Not As Easy As 1, 2, 3” does a solid job of reporting on the landscape of teacher evaluation right now. In sum, despite all the rancor—or because of it—very little is happening:

Teachers Jody Passanisi and Shara Peters asked the education community an interesting question in their recent Smart Blogs post, “Consumer, creator… what’s next?” Unpacking the titular question, they explained,