The Christian Science Monitor
October 1, 2009

"The news from a major new education study is encouraging: Student achievement is going up, and the gaps in test scores between subgroups - such as between African-Americans and whites - are closing across all grade levels and subjects.

The study, released Thursday by the Center on Education Policy (CEP), examines student performance in all 50 states since 2002, when the No Child Left Behind Act took effect. It paid particular attention to the achievement gaps for minority and low-income students.

The report focused on "trend lines" - for Latino students in fourth-grade reading, for instance, or for low-income students in high school math - and examined the gaps between lines. The gaps narrowed in 74 percent of all trend lines the researchers examined, most often because the gains made by lower-performing groups outpaced those made by the top-performing group."

The New York Times
September 30, 2009

"ON a recent Monday afternoon in the back of a middle school kitchen in Queens, it sounded as if a deal was going down.

“You want garam? I can get you garam.”

Jorge Collazo, executive chef for New York City schools, was making an offer to Sharon Barlatier, the manager of one of the largest middle school cafeterias in New York, and, by extension, the country.

Her job is to entice nearly 2,000 students at the height of adolescent squirreliness to eat a good lunch. Because many of her students at Middle School 137 come from families with Indian roots, curry is one of her secret weapons. The spice mix garam masala might improve its firepower.

She has to make curry from a limited list of ingredients approved by the Department of Education: frozen pre-roasted commodity chicken parts, jarred chopped garlic and a generic curry powder."

The Washington Post
October 1, 2009

"At Vivian Elementary School, about 12 miles from the site of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, students spend about an hour once a week talking about bullies--and what to do when they see one.

Every child from kindergarten through sixth grade--and all of the adults in the school--learn how to identify bullying behaviors and how to stand up to a bully without inflaming the situation.

“This is the culture of our school,” said social worker Molly Lacy. “Safety is our big concern. We give the children tools so that they have the ability to problem solve most situations, but they are also comfortable asking an adult for help."

The Washington Post
September 28, 2009

"We say we are buying a house. But for most of us parents, the house is not the whole story. It is the local public school we are investing in, and sometimes it can be a very daunting financial and personal decision.

In the early 1990s, when my journalist wife was making what seemed to me big bucks as a television producer, we could afford to live in Scarsdale, N.Y. That village's public schools cost us about as much in real estate taxes as the tuition at the private schools our kids had attended in Pasadena, Calif. Fortunately, we got what we paid for in Scarsdale. That is not always the case."

The New York Times
September 22, 2009

"Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5.

The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a bill to sign in December.

Experts describe the current array of programs serving young children and their families nationwide as a hodgepodge of efforts with little coordination or coherence. Financing comes from a shifting mix of private, local, state and federal money. Programs are run out of storefronts and churches, homes and Head Start centers, public schools and other facilities. Quality is uneven, with some offering stimulating activities, play and instruction but others providing little more than a room and a television."

The Washington Post
September 17, 2009

"At age 13, Woodbridge resident Paige Epler has built a résumé that could rival those of people twice her age and has become one of the youngest people to receive a high school diploma from an accredited U.S. school.

And, with that behind her, the prodigy started another academic endeavor last week: college at George Mason University.

"It's amazing she is only 13 and already comfortable in a college atmosphere," said Pam Epler, Paige's mother. "She feels excited and challenged about the academic opportunities there."

Paige graduated from the University of Oklahoma High School in Norman, Okla., on June 5. After starting at the distance-learning school when she was just 9 years old, Paige, who gave the commencement speech, finished with a 4.0 grade-point average."

Los Angeles Times
September 16, 2009

"It seems so simple and fair. Because teachers are hired to teach, let's evaluate them on the basis of student performance. After all, employees in other fields are rated on their ability to perform their designated tasks. When teachers resist being similarly judged, therefore, they clearly are trying to evade accountability.

At least that's the common perception in the debate over the U.S. Department of Education's $4-billion "Race to the Top" fund. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature are weighing whether to change a 2006 law to allow this performance/evaluation linkage so the state can qualify for some of this money.

But before jumping to conclusions, taxpayers need to read the fine print that lays out the rules for the distribution of these funds in what is the federal government's greatest involvement in education reform in our history. To be labeled effective, teachers have to demonstrate that their students achieve "acceptable rates" of growth in an academic year."

The New York Times
September 15, 2009

"Some American school districts have turned increasingly to overseas recruiting to find teachers willing to work in their hard-to-staff schools, according to a new report by a national teachers union.

The report used government data to estimate that 19,000 foreign teachers were working in the United States on temporary visas in 2007, and that the number was rising steadily. There are more than three million teachers in American public schools.

“Overseas-trained teachers are being recruited from nearly all corners of the globe and are being placed primarily in hard-to-staff inner-city or very rural schools teaching the hard-to-fill disciplines of math, science and special education,” said the report, by the American Federation of Teachers."

The New York Times
September 11, 2009

"When several preschool teachers in Los Angeles fell sick last April after eating brownies, public health investigators suspected itwasn’t a typical case of food poisoning. The symptoms included giddiness, dizziness, mood changes, dry mouth — and a bad case of the munchies.

One of the teachers had bought the homemade goodies a few days earlier from what she thought was a church bake sale; she shared them with colleagues during a work break.

But within 90 minutes of eating just one brownie each, five teachers became ill; the adult son of the buyer also reported symptoms.

It turned out there had been no church bake sale. And a leftover piece of brownie tested positive for cannabinoids found in marijuana."

The New York Times
September 9, 2009

"Millions of American schoolchildren, oblivious to the uproar that preceded a back-to-school speech by President Obama, heard him exhort them to greatness on Tuesday, watching, applauding and in some classrooms cheering a nationally broadcast address that urged them to set high goals, knuckle down in their studies and persevere through failure.

“Don’t ever give up on yourself, because when you give up on yourself you give up on your country,” Mr. Obama told students packed into a high school gymnasium in a Washington suburb.

Several school districts in Maryland, Texas, Virginia and other states, where clamor by conservatives accusing the White House of partisan motives was loudest, decided not to show the speech. Some school officials said schedules were too packed to accommodate a presidential interruption, while others said they had taped the speech to show later this week.

And in thousands of schools that did show it, some children opted out after they or their parents decided they should not watch."