K-12

Weekend Test Prep Program Is Planned for D.C. Schools
D.C. public schools will launch a weekend academic program this month to help more than 7,500 students at 91 schools pass standardized tests in the spring, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced yesterday.

Extend school year, Anchorage district chief suggests
Anchorage School District superintendent Carol Comeau is flirting with the idea of extending the school day or school year to boost academic performance.

You're Asian, How Could You Fail Math?
"Top of the Class" is a perfect modern example. Published in 2005, the authors claim to offer readers 17 "secrets" that Asian parents supposedly use to develop high school graduates who earn A-pluses and head to Ivy League colleges. It's a marketing concept built purely on the popular belief in the Myth of the Model Minority.  However, public school teachers and education activists, have seen their share of Asian-American students do poorly in school, get actively involved in gangs, drop out, or exhibit any number of other indicators of school failure not usually associated with "model minorities." A critical unmasking of this racist myth is needed because it both negatively affects the classroom lives of Asian American students and contributes to the justification of race and class inequality in schools and society.

Leadership

State's education commissioner heads to Miss. foundation
Tennessee's education commissioner who expandedpre-kindergarten and helped usher in No Child Left Behind accountability to the state resigned her post Thursday.  Lana Seivers was appointed Tennessee's top education official in 2003 by Gov. Phil Bredesen after serving as director of Clinton City Schools, a three-school district with fewer than 1,000 students, for almost 15 years.

New education chief facing a big test
An Ohio education official with a national reputation for inspiring change beat out two other finalists for the top education post in Massachusetts, becoming the first out-of-stater to hold the job since 1986.

School Choice

A Libertarian Is Searching For an Education 'Plan B'
A prominent supporter of a market-based approach to improving public schools, Sol Stern, says he no longer believes charter schools or vouchers are a "panacea."

School Choice Isn’t Enough Instructional reform is the key to better schools.

Virtual Schools Could Get Logged Off
Wisconsin is at the center of the debate after an appeals court in December ordered the state to stop funding the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, the state's largest virtual school with 800 students. The ruling was the first of its kind in the nation and has triggered a debate among lawmakers over how the schools should be funded and regulated. The schools' supporters are preparing to fight one plan they say would cripple them in Wisconsin.

Fair Trade: Five Deals to Expand and Improve Charter Schooling
Charter schools and their opponents are often locked in unproductive confrontations. But there are bargains that they can—and should—strike that address legitimate concerns of charter school critics, while allowing high-quality charter schools to expand and serve more students.  

STEM

UNESCO Report Calls for Ed. Tech. Training (Edweek)
If teachers around the world do not take part in more professional-development training in information and communication technologies, or ICT, they will continue to lack the skills necessary to integrate technology into the classroom and improve student learning, concludes a report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

U.S. Dominance in Science at Risk, Report Says
The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said on Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.

Teacher

New York Measuring Teachers by Test Scores
New York City has embarked on an ambitious experiment, yet to be announced, in which some 2,500 teachers are being measured on how much their students improve on annual standardized tests. The move is so contentious that principals in some of the 140 schools participating have not told their teachers that they are being scrutinized based on student performance and improvement.

Post-Secondary Education

Jury Orders U. of Phoenix Parent to Pay $277 Million
A federal jury in Arizona ordered Apollo to pay an estimated $277.5 million to shareholders who sued the higher education company and two former executives in 2004 for securities fraud.

This just in: AG finds the Constitution
At issue are two opinions in 2005 and 2006 in which the attorney general's office ruled that military veterans who weren't U.S. citizens when they joined the service no longer qualified for an 85-year-old Texas program, known as "the Hazlewood exemption" that waives college tuition.

Education Finance

EdTrust Releases The Funding Gap
The seventh in a series of annual reports, The Funding Gap includes state-by-state analyses of funding trends from 1999 to 2005, comparing the resources available to school districts serving the highest percentages of low-income students and students of color to the resources available to districts serving the lowest percentages of such students.  For the first time, the report also compares funding available to school districts serving the high percentages of English language learners (ELL) to that available to districts serving the lowest percentages of ELL.  Using data for the eight states with the highest percentages of English learners, the report finds that high-ELL districts generally receive less financial support than do districts with few or no ELL students.  “This report delivers both bad news and good news,” said Kati Haycock, President of The Education Trust.  “We hope that the bad news will shine a light on the work that must be done to make the promise of equal educational opportunity real.  The good news will remind citizens and policymakers that unjust funding patterns are not carved in stone – they can change, and they have changed in states that are committed to greater equity.”  

Garrett outlines legislative funding requests for education
Oklahoma educators want $503 million more for public schools next year to pay for teacher pay raises, rising school operating costs and adding five instructional days to the academic year, state Superintendent of Schools Sandy Garrett said Wednesday.  If approved by the Oklahoma Legislature, the funding request would push Oklahoma's public school budget to a record $3 billion next year. But Garrett told public school administrators and superintendents that additional money may be hard to find in what is shaping up as a tight budget year.