Daily EducationNews.org
Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Baltimore Sun
Nailing down buildings' uses
Political, community leaders question futures of Baltimore schools set to close

Race, image front and center in Duke story
Until last month I hardly thought about Duke University's lacrosse team, except as whompin' fodder for my beloved Johns Hopkins University lacrosse team.

Boston Globe
States omit minorities' school scores
Laquanya Agnew and Victoria Duncan share a desk, a love of reading and a passion for learning. But because of a loophole in the No Child Left Behind Act, one second-grader's score in Tennessee counts more than the other's. That is because Laquanya is black, and Victoria is white.

Costly boarding schools offer more aid
EXETER, N.H. -- Trying to reverse a perception that they're only for the well-to-do, several old-line New England boarding schools are offering more aid and pledging to stop rejecting students for admission because of family income.

Chicago Sun-Times
Gates Foundation gives $21 million to city high schools
Freshmen at 14 Chicago public high schools will have a more challenging and engaging curriculum in English, math and science -- and better-trained teachers -- thanks to a $21 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

'Achievement gap' masked in Chicago suburb
When Toia Jones taught in Chicago's public schools, it was easy to figure out why some kids weren't doing as well as others.

States help schools dodge No Child
States are helping public schools escape penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law's requirement that students of all races must show academic progress.

Principal's order forces kids to use buckets instead of bathrooms
INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- A principal trying to prevent walkouts during immigration rallies inadvertently introduced a lockdown so strict that children weren't allowed to go to the bathroom, and instead had to use buckets in the classroom, an official said.

Chicago Tribune 
School violence draws more cops

Christian Science Monitor 
Principal helps village feed itself
Amid drought, a Kenyan schoolmaster's farming lessons break the cycle of aid dependency. By Mike Pflanz

Dallas Morning News
Rural Texas students fall through federal loophole
AUSTIN - Thousands of rural Texas students are exempt from a portion of the federal No Child Left Behind Act because the state doesn't require some public schools to account for the academic performance of small student groups.

Des Moines Register
D.M. schools' graduation rate slips
The percentage of students graduating from metro high schools last year dropped slightly to about 11 percentage points lower than the state's graduation rate, in part because the district made changes to statistics.

Deseret News
Prom princesses
As their classmates mill in the halls during the lunch period, a group of Granite High girls peruses satin, lace, velvet and tulle for the perfect frock. "I love frilly!" one girl squealed, twirling in a punch-colored tiered gown, as a friend tried to decide whether an aqua beaded number was right for her.

eSchool News
Free online courses teach tech skills
Public-private partnership yields free computer science lessons for students, teachers

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Who's in control?
Christian student group senses bias as district reviews facility-use policy
GRAPEVINE -- It has organized rallies for hundreds of students.

Hartford Courant
UConn Conference Will Take A Look At `Achievement Gap'
The University of Connecticut's Neag School of Education will hold a conference June 13 in Storrs on "Closing the Achievement Gap."

Houston Chronicle
TSU board votes to ax Slade over spending
Though her seven-year tenure appears headed to an end, Priscilla Slade's contract guarantees the right to a public hearing within the next month before the firing becomes final, and she plans to request one. Slade, meanwhile, will be on paid leave.

Craddick backs Perry's business tax plan
Speaker Tom Craddick, a key figure in the success or failure of any tax overhaul, said Monday that he generally supports Gov. Rick Perry's proposal to create a new business levy to help pay for school property tax cuts.

Indianapolis Star-Tribune
Teacher with troubled past quits
Drug and misconduct cases in Florida weren't caught in Indiana background check An Irvington Community School teacher whose drug and misconduct cases in another state slipped through an Indiana background check last year has quit his job, a school administrator said Monday.

Inside Higher ED
Still Burning   April 18
Firestorm over Duke lacrosse party won't go away - even without DNA evidence or publicly released indictments.

A Win-Win on Health Benefits  
Calif. community college district is using bonds to provide retiree benefits - and to free up money for current faculty members.

The Confidence Business  
Faculty decry what they see as administrative hiring binge at Eastern Oregon University.

Los Angeles Daily News
More plans for LAUSD in the works
Attempting to seize the initiative from the city's mayor, two state legislators and a coalition of community-based organizations led by the teachers union made separate educational reform pushes Monday, both advocating breaking up the district.

Mayor to push for control of LAUSD
Taking his campaign for education reform to a citywide audience, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to use tonight's State of the City address to ask the public to back his efforts to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Los Angeles Times
Guidelines for Teaching English Are Adopted
By Carla Rivera
A divided state Board of Education on Monday adopted far-reaching new guidelines for reading and English language arts textbooks aimed at California's elementary and middle school students, despite objections that the materials do not do enough to help students struggling to learn English.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MPS aims to provide free Web access
Looking to give poorer students the technological muscle to scale the ?igital divide,?the Milwaukee Public Schools district is turning to the promise of an emerging wireless service described as ?i-Fi on steroids.?

New York Times
Lawyer Says Two Duke Lacrosse Players Are Indicted in Rape Case
By DUFF WILSON
A grand jury issued sealed indictments in the case of a woman who accused three lacrosse players of raping her.

Anger Rises on Both Sides of Strike at University of Miami
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Six janitors and five students are on a hunger strike, with several asserting that the university's president, Donna Shalala, was a union-buster.

Palm Beach Post
Teens may pick major in 8th grade
Lawmakers say plan could help students get head start on chosen career paths.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Corzine OKs prepaid lunch at N.J. schools
Associated Press
Schoolyard bullies will have to look elsewhere to make an easy buck. A measure signed into law yesterday by Gov. Corzine allows school districts to create programs that let parents prepay for school lunches, regardless of grade level. The goal is to ensure that students do not use lunch money on unhealthy vending-machine offerings or after-school snacks.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Racial chasm persists in college degrees
The number of Pennsylvanians with a college degree grew dramatically over a decade, but gaps -- racial and geographic-- persist.

Richmond Times Dispatch
Loophole leaves 2 million uncounted
States are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law's requirements.

Rocky Mountain News
DPS gets tough
Proposed graduation requirements unveiled Monday for Denver Public Schools could turn Colorado's most urban school district into its most academically rigorous beginning with the Class of 2010.

Salt Lake Tribune
Survey collects data about Utah schools' seismic problems
The Utah Geologic Survey knows hundreds of Utah's schools are on shaky ground: Some sit directly atop fault lines overdue for major earthquakes. "The scariest thing is what we don't know," said Gary Christenson, manager of the geologic hazards program for the Utah Geologic Survey.

San Antonio Express-News
Carlos Guerra: Chapter 6 of Texas saga of school finance 'reform' kicks off
Though almost 90 percent of voters live in districts that benefit from Robin Hood's beneficence

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle's teaching of math confusing
Seattle Public Schools, in the midst of choosing new math textbooks, is finding itself caught up in a surprisingly heated debate: What is the best way to teach math?

St. Louis Post Dispatch 
County prosecutor seizes Riverview Gardens School District records
Reeling from an election that has further fractured its school board, the beleaguered Riverview Gardens School District now finds itself under investigation.

Tallahassee Democrat
Florida State makes Playboy's party-school list
Florida State University is ranked sixth in Playboy 's current top-10 list of party schools in the country.

USA Today 
Two athletes indicted in Duke case Identity of players, charges could be revealed today By Steve Wieberg and Jack Carey
DURHAM, N.C. A grand jury issued sealed indictments against two Duke University lacrosse players Monday in a case involving a woman who has accused three team members of raping her at a party last month, according to Robert Ekstrand, a Durham attorney representing many of the players.

Teachers unions are obstacle to reform
USA TODAY's recent debate captures the fundamental difficulty in K-12 educational reform. In two words: teachers unions ("In NYC, model emerges for fixing urban schools," Our view; "Schools aren't factories," Opposing view, Education reform debate, Thursday).

Washington Post
Competition Worries Graduate Programs
By Valerie Strauss
Some educators fear growing international competition and high dropout rates could hurt some graduate programs.

Student Meal Program To Expand to 3 a Day
As many as 20,000 D.C. children will soon be eating three government-subsidized meals a day, according to plan to end child hunger in the city over the next decade.

Wichita Eagle
City, district negotiate pay for school officers
BY ICESS FERNANDEZ, The Wichita Eagle
Officials with the Wichita Police Department and the school district discussed Monday how to divide increasing costs for school resource officers without breaking the bank.

WorldNet Daily
'Marketing of Evil' condemned as 'hate literature' by 'gay' profs
University faculty bans WND book
"I thought I was beyond being able to be shocked," said Alliance Defense Fund attorney David French, who for years has defended Christians and conservatives against every type of persecution on college campuses.

International Articles

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Overseas students plans unveiled
Plans to attract a further 100,000 overseas students to the UK are to be unveiled by Tony Blair.

Attack on city academy 'cronyism'
The city academy scheme is plagued by "sleaze and cronyism" and threatens state education, the NUT says.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) 
Turning the tide on times tables
Cuisenaire rods make maths come alive, finds Lila Das Gupta .
There is nothing like having an academic child for lulling you into a false sense of security. Our eldest was reading at the age of four and never had trouble memorising his times tables.

The Guardian 
Star of creationist circuit flies in to stir British debate
Education: Leading Australian creationist on lecture tour as debate over the role of religion in education intensifies.

The Independent (UK)
Teacher breaks down as he blames stress for quitting
A former president of Britain's biggest teachers' union broke down in tears yesterday as he revealed how stress and "government bullying" had forced him to quit the profession.

School puts happiness on syllabus
One of the country's leading independent schools is to put lessons in happiness on the timetable for the first time from September.