Afternoon announcements: Students take a la carte classes

According to the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only half of 8th-graders nationwide know the vocabulary they’ve expected to have learned by their age. Fourth-graders fared even worse, averaging a score of 218 words correct out of 500. Wall Street Journal

Students in Louisiana, Arizona, Michigan and Utah can or will soon be able to opt out of some traditional classroom instruction for more specialized teaching. Students can choose from “a la carte” classes offered by businesses, online courses, charter schools, tutors and other specialists. Yahoo! News

The so-called fiscal cliff threatens education funding nationwide. Education advocates are organizing sit-ins, protests and calling and writing their Congress members to try to prevent the cuts. Here’s a roundup of what organizations and others are doing to stop these cuts. Politics K-12