February 15, 2011
The question of what it takes — and what it costs — to properly educate New Jersey’s nearly 1.4 million school children took center stage in a Bergen County courtroom Monday, as the state’s long-running Abbott vs. Burke school funding case returned to court. School superintendents from Piscataway and Woodbridge were called as the first […]
February 15, 2011
There are few issues that generate more heat than spending on public education. Now more than ever, schools are faced with decreased state and federal aid and skyrocketing costs of state mandates, mostly to pay for staff benefits and pensions. Special education services also make up a significant chunk of school district budgets. The per […]
February 15, 2011
To see how tight many school budgets have become, consider Beverly Park Elementary in the Highline School District south of Seattle. The only way the school was able to replace worn-out basketballs, kickballs and jump ropes this fall was through a bake sale at a law firm where one of its teachers used to work. […]
February 15, 2011
A little girl with pigtails poked her head into the school nurse’s office at Roll Hill Elementary School in North Fairmount. "My throat hurts," said Kennedy Drake, 6. It was around 9 a.m. on a Thursday. Nurse Angela Mullins’ busy day was just beginning. Ten minutes later, a 7-year-old girl limped in to get an […]
February 15, 2011
The Kansas Senate voted Monday to restore $26 million in proposed budget cuts for special education funding, which proponents said was needed to prevent the future loss of millions more in federal aid. Voice vote approval for the measure followed nearly 45 minutes of debate during which members argued over whether to restore the proposed […]
February 14, 2011
Two years after his appointment as emergency financial manager for the Detroit Public Schools, Robert Bobb has outsourced many services, unearthed corruption and closed a number of schools. Yet the district’s mammoth deficit has continued to grow amid the state’s downturn and growing pension and debt obligations, and the city’s schools are still grappling with […]
February 14, 2011
After a decade, many of Missouri’s charter schools are not doing much better than traditional public schools, a national watchdog group concluded. & #x0A;Two reasons: not getting their fair share of education money or enough monitoring, contends a report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Chronically low-performing charter schools, the report concluded, should […]
February 14, 2011
The funding and policy control of Iowa schools are slated to get significant attention in the state Legislature this week. On the Senate side, majority Democrats plan to move ahead with a 2 percent increase in base per-pupil funding for Iowa’s 359 K-12 public school districts, an amount that backers say will provide about $65 […]
February 14, 2011
It’s the worst possible scenario, say South Florida’s schools officials. At the same time millions in federal stimulus dollars are running out, the governor’s budget calls for the state to slash education spending by 10 percent. “The levees will burst as they did in Hurricane Katrina,’’ said Broward Superintendent Jim Notter. “We will have a […]
February 14, 2011
There is no more pressing topic in education today than closing the achievement gap, and there is no one in America who knows more about the gap than Ronald Ferguson. Although he is a Harvard professor based in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Ferguson, 60, spends lots of time flying around the country visiting racially mixed public […]