Morning Announcements: February 21, 2012

Good Morning! Fortunately we were able to skip the sluggish Monday had head right into Tuesday. The countdown through a short week begins! Here are your latest education headlines.

As a part of the Obama administration’s efforts to address the alarming rate of childhood obesity, a new will be announced that highlights guidelines for vending machines in schools, according to the New York Times. The goal is to set nationwide standards that promote healthy choices for nourishment of growing children.

In Chicago, the public schools system’s new administration has added a new assessment test for elementary school students. As the Chicago Tribune reports, the new measures come after years of complaints from teachers and administrators that the previous assessment tests for the state's Illinois Standard Achievement Test set the bar too low when preparing kids for college.

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Afternoon Announcements: January 9, 2012

It's the beginning of another work week, so between anxiously awaiting another weekend and praying for a snow day, take in the latest in education news.

Parents in the Atlanta suburb of Norcross, Georgia are fuming over the response of the Gwinnett County school district after they complained that a math worksheet sent home to elementary school students contained inappropriate references to slavery. According to the Atlantic Journal-Constitution, school officials assured parents that the principal at Beaver Ridge Elementary School, where most of the students are minorities, would work with teachers to develop more appropriate lessons. Parents, however, felt the response was not enough and are demanding an apology and diversity training for the teachers and staff. The worksheet contained questions such as: “Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” and “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?”

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Afternoon Announcements: November 9, 2011

A much-anticipated hearing was held yesterday on a Senate bill that would reauthorize the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Education Week blogs that the hearing had “one of the bill's chief sponsors casting it as an important but imperfect compromise, while republicans were saying the bill wouldn't do enough to rein in the federal role in education.” The Associated Press writes that although lawmakers in Washington, DC are in agreement that NCLB needs to be fixed, finding the fix hasn’t been easy.

In Education Next, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush talks about the importance of giving every student a digital learning experience.

Some lawmakers and educators want the Alabama state school board to retract its decision to adopt a set of national core standards for teaching math and English, reports the Associated Press.

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Afternoon Announcements: November 3, 2011

A story in today’s Press-Enterprise (CA) talks about the importance of graduating all kids from high school prepared for college and a career. According to the article, experts acknowledge that improving the educational accomplishments of the region’s students won’t be easy and that it will take at least several years to implement changes and a generation to realize their benefits. Alliance President Bob Wise was quoted saying, “money doesn’t necessarily have to be an issue. We need to think, ‘What’s the end product we want?’ look at dollars available and direct them that way, instead of, ‘This is the way we’ve been educating for the last 50 or 100 years.’” he said. “We need to look at students the way Congress looked at banks and investment houses and invested in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program, the government’s 2008 effort to address the subprime mortgage crisis). This is a hard-nosed economic return on investment.”

According to an editorial in the Oregonian, the ferment in Oregon public education right now is not that our schools are crowded and underfunded; it's that they're going online in a big way.

The Hill reports that a Senate republican leader is pushing back against claims that he and Sen. Tom Harkin have a secret plan to pass the Iowa Democrat’s education reform bill.

D.C. educators rated ‘effective’ can still lose jobs, according to an article in the Washington Post. Read Entire Post

Afternoon Announcements: August 1, 2011

Education Week reports that the debt ceiling fix could mean problems for schools, citing Rep. George Miller, the top Democrat on the House education committee, who warned that the reductions contained in the debt ceiling legislation are “going to make life much more difficult" for public schools.

The Los Angeles Times reports that after a particularly brutal budgeting season this summer, states and school districts across the country have fired thousands of teachers, raised college tuition, relaxed standards, slashed days off the academic calendar and gutted pre-kindergarten and summer school programs.

The Save Our Schools march on Saturday called for teacher-backed reform, reports the Huffington Post. And the Washington Post shares Matt Damon’s speech during the rally. In his opening remarks, he says, “I landed in New York a few hours ago and caught a flight down here because I needed to tell you all in person that I think you’re awesome.”

The Atlantic reports that according to Missouri Senate Bill 54, just signed by state Governor Jay Nixon, any social networking is prohibited between teachers and students; this includes not only Facebook, but any social network “that is exclusive and allows for private communication,” according to ABC News.

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Morning Announcements: September 27, 2010

Federal authorities are investigating whether Atlanta Public Schools committed fraud by illicitly boosting scores on standardized tests, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In his column Class Struggle, Jay Matthews writes about how to make teacher salaries look better.

The Post and Courier in South Carolina asks, “While the [Charleston County] school district has been quick to honor top-ranked educators, has it done enough about teachers at the other end of the scale?”

Julia Steiny of the Providence Journal details how administrators and teachers at North Providence High School got to know their students better.

According to the Des Moines Register, Iowa is on the verge of its biggest wave of school mergers in 15 years as more districts trade hometown identity for more financial security.

The Honolulu Star Bulletin reports, “Teach for America, the competitive national program that recruits top-notch college graduates to teach in public schools, has more than quadrupled its Hawaii ranks since starting in the islands in 2006 and is looking to expand further at a time when the state needs more highly qualified teachers in hard-to-staff areas.”

The Star-Ledger (NJ) editorial board writes, “Teacher data is useless without uniform state standards”.

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