February 1, 2011
The National Alliance for Medicaid in Education (NAME) hosted a national conference call to review the results of the NAME 2009 Biennial Survey Trends and Data. The survey collects data to identify trends in school-based Medicaid direct service billing and administrative claiming. There were close to 100 participants in the conference call held on January […]
January 31, 2011
North Chevy Chase Elementary School, with a demanding curriculum, strong faculty and high student test scores, meets nobody’s definition of a failure. Nobody’s, that is, except the federal government’s. Last year, the Montgomery County school failed to make what the government calls "adequate yearly progress," even though 91 percent of its students passed the state […]
January 31, 2011
Student attendance rates are up, suspensions are down and math performance is improving in the nine struggling Houston ISD schools taking part in the district’s experimental reform program called Apollo 20. But the instruction in many classrooms remains too basic and boring, according to the first major progress report on the $29 million effort being […]
January 31, 2011
Montgomery County School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said Friday that he is formulating a budget that could endanger more than 600 teaching and support positions as the system prepares to absorb more than 2,000 additional students th is fall. Weast said his budget plans would be "painful" as they raised class sizes and froze teachers’ […]
January 31, 2011
Ohio schools have been warned to brace for state funding cuts of 10 to 20 percent, but some key lawmakers say it’s unlikely that every district will face the same level of reductions. Considering that schools are second only to Medicaid as a percentage of the $50 billion two-year state budget, districts are eager to […]
January 31, 2011
You thought this school year was bad? With the federal stimulus dollars set to run out in June, next year has the potential to be a lot worse, Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. “This will be a different school system,” he said. That is, unless state lawmakers fill the funding gap. Gov. Rick Scott hasn’t […]
January 31, 2011
State Sen. Angie Buhl, D-Sioux Falls, drew applause from a large audience at a legislative coffee Saturday when she said, "We should not accept as a foregone conclusion that education needs to take a 10 percent cut." That scene signaled a prevailing sentiment in the Holiday Inn ballroom among both the audience and lawmakers about […]
January 31, 2011
Trenton and other cash-strapped school districts are sitting on millions of dollars of federal money, but they have been reluctant to spend it ahead of possible announcements of more state aid cuts by Gov. Chris Christie. Trenton, for example, learned in September that it had been awarded $7.5 million under federal legislation targeted at saving […]
January 30, 2011
In a big room with a kitchen at J. Harold Brinley Middle School, a girl in a wheelchair pushed by her mother waits to be fed through a plastic tube. The feeding is tricky, but routine for Keri Mossel, 36, the school nurse. Mossel must insert the tube through a pea-sized hole in the abdomen […]
January 28, 2011
The success of a special education classroom created in the middle school two years ag o may make way for a similar classroom on the elementary school level. Libertyville Elementary District 70 is looking at creating a self-contained classroom next year to house up to eight students requiring special education, said Marilynn Menuey, the district’s […]