November 10, 2010
Gov. Chris Christie is back in attack mode with state educators, saying greedy teachers unions and superintendents are largely to blame for failing New Jersey schools. At a town hall event Tuesday, the Republican governor ripped into a Parsippany superintendent who is trying to renegotiate his contract before the governor’s new superintendent salary cap goes […]
November 9, 2010
The two Southeast Washington middle schools are less than a mile apart. The real distance that separates them is the number of hours their students spend in class each week. At Johnson Middle School, the day is 61/2 hours, 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Students at AIM Academy, a KIPP charter school, stay for nine […]
November 9, 2010
Some of Illinois’ best-known teacher education programs are leaving prospective teachers ill-prepared for the classroom, according to a new report released Tuesday. The National Council on Teacher Quality examined 111 undergraduate and graduate programs in 53 education schools across the state and found many — including Illinois State University and Northern Illinois University, the state’s […]
November 9, 2010
Kansas is one of 11 states that will share in a $38.8 million Safe and Supportive Schools grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The purpose of the grant is to measure school safety at the building level and provide funds for interventions in those schools with the greatest needs. The ultimate goal is to […]
November 9, 2010
A Senate bill that would prohibit restraint and seclusion from being used to control students with disabilities is causing a split among some disability-rights advocates. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Sens. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., and Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., would place an absolute ban on certain restraining techniques, such as holds that impede breathing […]
November 9, 2010
Governor-elect Dan Malloy may have promised not to cut state aid for schools, but state education leaders aren’t taking that for granted: They’re scrambling to form a plan for dealing with a major loss of funding. For the current school year, state lawmakers capped school aid at $1.9 billion, but $270 million of that was […]
November 9, 2010
Boston schools underwent a radical experiment in the past decade: Four large neighborhood high schools were shuttered and replaced with more than a dozen smaller ones. The thinking was that smaller schools could deliver a better education. A few years into the effort, funded with millions of dollars from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, […]
November 9, 2010
A handful of districts, some with the approval of their local teachers’ unions, are experimenting with alternatives to the fundamental components that govern teachers’ base-pay raises. Ranging from a long-standing plan in Eagle County, Colo., to a contract ratified earlier this year by teachers in the Pittsburgh district, the systems tie raises more closely to […]
November 9, 2010
The Alabama Board of Education will decide next week whether to join 38 other states in adopting common standards for math and English language arts. The Common Core State Standards outline what students are expected to learn in those subjects in each grade. The initiative is led by the National Governors Association Center for Best […]
November 8, 2010
Collaborations popping up across the country between charter and traditional public schools show promise that charter schools could fulfill their original purpose of becoming research-and-development hothouses for public education, champions of charters say. But both supporters and skeptics of charter schools agree that so far the cooperative efforts are not widespread nor are most of […]