Education News

District officials are anticipating a school bus driver sickout Friday and Monday and are warning employees that they can be fired for participating.

More than 1,500 bus drivers and attendants transport thousands of D.C. students with disabilities to and from school each day.

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The legislation, which eliminates 70 programs, is intended to reduce “the federal footprint,” said its sponsor, Representative John Kline.    

Prince George’s and six other counties in Maryland have been unable to agree with the state department of education on the best way to use student test scores to measure teacher performance in time to meet Friday’s deadline for submitting revised evaluation plans.

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The president said he would ask for changes to the E-rate program so that 99 percent of schools could upgrade to high-speed broadband and wireless service.    

President Obama visited Mooresville Middle School in North Carolina on Thursday to promote a new five-year initiative aimed at ensuring that 99 percent of public schools in the country have access to the Internet. Here is a White House transcript of his appearance:

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A coalition of education organizations and unions that support the Common Core State Standards issued an open letter on Thursday backing a moratorium of at least one year on the high stakes associated with new standardized tests being given to students that are aligned with the Core.

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Republicans in Congress have rolled out legislation that would sharply limit the power of the executive branch and shrink the role of the federal government in public education in a rebuke to the Obama administration’s influence over education from kindergarten through 12th grade.

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The Senate deadlocked Thursday over federal student loan interest rates, with no consensus in sight on how to prevent rates on certain loans from doubling for about 7 million borrowers on July 1.

Amid a swirl of competing proposals from lawmakers and the White House, preliminary votes showed that no Senate bills have the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Democratic-led chamber.

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Many of the Prince George’s County community leaders and elected officials who attended a listening session Wednesday to offer their opinion on what characteristics the new schools chief should have said they are tired of the rapid turnover at the helm of the public school system.

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A new analysis says that America's high school graduation rate hit nearly 75 percent in 2010 — the latest year for which data are available — the highest point since 1973. Furthermore, the increase since 2000 has been largely fueled by improvements in the graduation rates for blacks and Hispanics.

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In the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up category: A Louisiana state senator defended the Louisiana Science Education Act — a 2008 law that allows creationism to be taught in public school science classrooms through materials that ostensibly "critique" evolution — by invoking a witch doctor that he visited and found helpful. (See video below)

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“Fit” seems to be the most overused word in the college search process. But the campus tour, my daughter and I have found, is a helpful way to try the college out for size.    

The last Poetry Pairing of the school year matches “The Gulf, 1987″ by Deborah Paredez, and the article “New Summer for Shore Residents, but Not as Before” by Peter Applebome.    

Fairfax County has knocked Montgomery County from the top spot on a list analyzing graduation rates for the country’s 50 largest school districts.

Graduation rates in Montgomery slipped more than 3 percentage points, to 84 percent from the previous year for the Class of 2010, according to a report from Education Week released Thursday.

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