April 25, 2011
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell unveiled a program Tuesday that would award $3 million in merit-based bonuses to recruit and retain teachers in select schools in Northern Virginia and elsewhere in the state. But the experiment in merit pay prompted concern in some school districts. Officials in Fairfax and Loudoun counties said they probably would reject […]
April 21, 2011
ST. LOUIS • The city’s schools superintendent plans to lay out a plan tonight to close three schools, reduce staff across the district and trim nearly $11 million in operations, while at the same time opening programs in four vacant school buildings. Superintendent Kelvin Adams’ budget for the 2011-12 school year is based on the […]
April 21, 2011
Emerging research suggests that, contrary to what students may think, material that’s easy to understand is not always easy to learn—and working harder can help them hold on to what they’ve learned. It’s a typical school scenario: A student strolls into c lass on test day, telling classmates how he crammed the night before and […]
April 21, 2011
The Renaissance Schools Fund, which for the last six yea rs has poured enough startup money into new charter schools to triple their number in the Chicago Public Schools system, has announced a new $60 million venture fund to add 50 more charter schools. Unlike the previous initiative launched in 2004 to raise funds aimed […]
April 20, 2011
Once a week, for at least an hour, middle school students at two Denver public schools are working in groups to try a new way of reading. “I have a clunk,” Martin Luther King Jr. Early College seventh-grader Brian Estrada told his group as they read a science passage. “Gnarled limbs. I re-read the sentence. […]
April 20, 2011
Detroit — Stan Johnson is principal of an aging Detroit school that’s long on maintenance needs and short on students. Hutchinson Elementary, built in 1916 to accommodate 744 children, has just 369 students and is one of many half-full buildings in Detroit Public Schools slated to close this June as the district tries to shrink […]
April 20, 2011
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced that New Hampshire will receive $1.47 million to turn around its persistently lowest achieving schools through the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. The funds are part of $546 million available to states for the School Improvement Grant program in fiscal year 2010. In fiscal year 2009, states […]
April 20, 2011
. — Texas House budget-writers voted Monday to free up an additional $3 billion for key state services through such moves as speeding up tax collections, delaying payments and suspending the back-to-school sales tax holiday. The bills next go to the full House, which Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, predicted could be willing to […]
April 20, 2011
A fifth-grader pulled Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Carmelo Ortiz aside at school Monday to tell him she thinks her father may be smoking crack. Ortiz is the resource officer at the girl’s school, East Lake Elementary. The student had learned to recognize drugs from one of Ortiz’s classroom presentations. Ortiz promised to follow up with […]
April 19, 2011
Veterans of the charter school movement and the turnaround model of school reform are among the people Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel has selected to help lead Chicago Public Schools under new CEO Jean-Claude Brizard. Emanuel said his appointments were made on a “collaborative basis” with Brizard. “I gave him my recommendations. A number of individuals he […]