KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For a couple tight weeks after taking in her sixth-grade stepson, Lisa Lewis fretted about how to pay for his school lunches. Unable to find a full-time job, the 37-year-old works part-time at a Kansas City, Kan., daycare, earning minimum wage. On that money alone, she supports herself, her unemployed husband, her stepson and her 11th-grade son. ...

Many area school districts are sending pink slips now to prepare for 2010-11 budgets. Specific layoffs are listed below when possible, followed by a dollar value of total cuts, including programs. Arlington Heights School District 25 LAYOFFS: 6.5 teachers, 4.5 teaching assistants and 1 central office secretary for a savings of $464,300. Barrington School District 220 15.3 teachers; 2 custodians; 3 ...

ATLANTA — The U.S. Department of Education has picked Delaware and Tennessee for the first round of its "Race to the Top" competition, giving part of an unprecedented $4.35 billion to the states, a source said on Monday. The states, selected from 16 finalists announced earlier this month, received hundreds of millions in grants designed to encourage the use of innovative ...

  This is an article about a serious case of bullying (Phoebe Prince) that resulted in suicide.  All teachers should address issues like this bullying incident.  The school district has not been charged so far.  Apparently, teachers and parents both reported the problems to administrators though.  I wouldn't be surprised if administrators are eventually charged.  It reminds me of the Megan ...

     I wanted to post this anti-bullying link in light of the Phoebe Prince article I posted.  Go to BullyPolice.org to get information on anti-bullying standards and how each state stacks up in relation to them.  You can view the current laws in your state and download forms and instructions that will help cover teachers legally when reporting bullying.  It's a ...

A Kansas City School District teacher Thursday was removed from her classroom pending the outcome of an investigation into whether she grabbed a pupil by the ears earlier this week. The alleged assault Monday at Pitcher Academy, 9915 E. 38th Terrace, left the 4-year-old pupil with scratches behind her ears, according to police. Norma Reyes told police she picked up her ...

Why Cathie Black is Good for NYC Public Schools Here in New York City the buzz about Cathie Black becoming the new Schools Chancellor is still hot. The big story is that Ms. Black has spent her career as an executive for Hearst Magazines and has no education background. While that may get some people crazy, I think it is very good ...

I wrote several weeks ago (not in the newspaper) that education in Wisconsin was entering "unchartered" waters. Oops. For one thing, I meant "uncharted" waters. A mental slip. More important, the waters are, in reality, about to become increasingly chartered. Charter schools are in for major boosts, both in Milwaukee and statewide, if Republican proposals in the Legislature become law. In ...

     This is another article posted in today's (Feb. 18, 2010) Indianapolis Star regarding teaching job cuts in Indiana.  There are many like it recently.  The outlook for Indiana teachers - especially new ones - is very bad!  Ironically, in yesterday's Indianapolis Star the Indiana Commissioner on Higher Education stated "There is a shortage of teachers in this state . . ...

     This is the link to the article I mentioned in a previous posting.  In Indiana, Ball State University and Ivy Tech Community college are "collaborating" to help teacher's aides become licensed teachers.  It will still take 4 years to complete the degree!  The appearance is of a conspiracy to prey on the fears of current teacher's aides whose jobs are ...

Thanks to draconian budget cuts, thousands of layoff notices have been delivered to teacher mailboxes nationwide over the past few weeks. But, after notices went home about pink slips handed out in the Arcadia Unified School District, Jocelyn Lam, a fifth grade student at Camino Grove Elementary decided there was something she could do to save her school's teachers: she emptied ...

A compilation of four new studies of one-to-one computing projects in K-12 schools identifies several factors that are key to the projects’ success, including adequate planning, stakeholder buy-in, and strong school or district leadership. Not surprisingly, the researchers say the most important factor of all is the teaching practices of instructors—suggesting school laptop programs are only as effective as the teachers ...

Lower Merion School District officials are spying on students and their families inside their homes with Web cameras installed in pupil laptops, claims Blake J. Robbins in a lawsuit against the district.

Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.

California's education budget crisis continues to spur some seriously heroic acts of sacrifice. Last week we reported on Jocelyn Lam, a Los Angeles area fifth grader who donated her $300 life savings to save her school's teachers from layoffs, sparking a community-wide fundraising drive. Now Michele Miller, a principal in the Rescue Union School District in suburban Sacramento, is selling her ...

Every year, American schools pay more than $8.6 billion in bonuses to teachers with Next page>> [page] "We're experimenting now," he said, noting pay-for-performance experiments in New York City, Houston and Nashville. Ninety percent of teachers' masters degrees are in education, not subjects such as English or math, according to a study by Marguerite Roza and Raegen Miller for the Center ...

Teachers at Chicago's 3-year-old Gary Comer College Prep sure know how to surprise (and motivate) their students. This afternoon at their Third Quarter Town Hall, the South Side charter school's staff staged an awesome flash mob performance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"—and it was all caught on video by a student. Principal James Troupis says his team didn't come up with the ...

It's official: Other nations are far better at educating their future citizens. Every three years, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, is administered to 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This year, high school students in Shanghai led the pack, with American students ranking average to below average by when compared to their global ...

Good news for teachers looking to collaborate with their colleagues in other parts of the world. Skype has a new free service just for educators called Skype in the classroom, "a free global community created in response to, and in consultation with, the growing number of teachers" using the tool to help students learn. Teachers already access the eight-year-old service for ...

Black and Latino teachers are leaving the profession “in droves,” says Betty Achinstein, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the co-author of Change(d) Agents: New Teachers of Color in Urban Schools. “Teachers of color” make up only 17 percent of the teaching force, despite the rising percentage of minority students, reports Miller-McCune. Schools are hiring more minority ...