Education News from Washington Post

Five years ago, I thought I was going to catch Miriam Hughey-Guy, principal of Barcroft Elementary School in Arlington County, making an excuse for her school’s failure to reach federal proficiency targets three years in a row.

When W. Taylor Reveley IV becomes president of Longwood University on June 1, he will be the third W. Taylor Reveley to lead a Virginia university in the past 50 years.

His grandfather, the late W. Taylor Reveley II, was president of Hampden-Sydney College, just down the road from Longwood, from 1963 to 1977. And his father, W. Taylor Reveley III, has been president of the College of William and Mary since 2008.

Karen Lewis, the fiery leader of the Chicago Teachers Union who led a strike last year and became a nationally known anti-school reform figure, has been elected to another three-year term as president. Today she will lead the first of three days of protests against Mayor Rahm Emanuel's plan to close 54 public schools.

Vouchers have been at the center of the school choice movement for many reformers, but they may be in trouble. Here making that argument is Abby Rapoport of The American Prospect, where this appeared.

By Abby Rapoport

Montgomery County high school students have been failing their final exams in math at high rates for five years, according to data released Friday night by school officials.

The new figures are similar to those released several weeks ago for January’s exams, which showed high failure rates across seven high school math courses — with a majority of the 30,000 Montgomery students who took the tests flunking.

Thousands of Fairfax County school employees are likely to receive raises in January as the School Board looks to boost lagging morale in the workforce.

Board members focused on teacher compensation Thursday as they worked to finalize next year’s $2.5 billion budget and address recent reports that Fairfax employees have sought jobs in neighboring districts with higher pay.

D.C. Public Schools officials say they anticipate sending fewer than 350 “excess” notices to teachers whose jobs have been eliminated because of budget cuts or changes to academic programs.

That number is in line with recent years despite the fact that 13 schools are slated to close in June, displacing hundreds of teachers. DCPS Chief of Human Capital Jason Kamras said the school system has worked closely with the Washington Teachers Union to match educators in closing schools with vacancies elsewhere.

In one of its final actions under the current school governance structure, the Prince George’s County Board of Education voted to hire more than a dozen employees who will work for and report to the board.

In the past two school years, 40 states detected potential cheating on standardized exams given to public school students in grades 3 to 12, according to a new report released by the Government Accountability Office.

Rumors are swirling that Gregory Thornton, the Milwaukee school superintendent, is interested in becoming the next schools chief in Prince George’s County.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Friday that Thornton, who served as a deputy superintendent in Montgomery County in 2003, did not deny the rumor that he was considering leaving Milwaukee to return to Maryland.

The Chicago Teachers Union and education activists are planning three days of demonstrations in different city neighborhoods, starting Saturday, to protest the closing of 54 public schools this year.

The closure plan by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and school district officials has been highly contentious, and has played a part in declining support for Emanuel, according to a new Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll, which showed that a majority of city residents oppose the closure plan, and that has affected his overall job rating.

Real Food for Kids - Montgomery is hosting a tasting and judging party for the group’s recipe contest this weekend.

The group of parent activists has been working to improve food served in schools. Last month Real Food for Kids encouraged the Montgomery community to submit healthy school lunch recipes that meet USDA guidelines and cost less than $4 a serving.

I've written a lot about growing resistance to high-stakes standardized testing and other corporate-driven school reforms. In the following piece, the argument is made that the revolution against the reform movement is here. It was written by Jeff Bryant, an Associate Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and the owner of a marketing and communications consultancy. It serves numerous organizations including Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, PBS, and International Planned Parenthood Foundation. He writes extensively about public education policy at The Education Opportunity Network. Follow Jeff on Twitter: jeffbcdm

Correction: The original version of this post said the scientist got 31.5 million followers as a result of Obama's tweet. I got that wrong. He potentially got that many readers for his study because that's how many followers Obama has. Sorry. The researcher did get worldwide attention.

Who are the world's sleepiest students?

It's the Americans, according to an analysis by Boston College researchers of data that was part of the 2011 international exams known as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).

Microsoft has donated $1 million to help D.C. teachers redesign their classrooms using a “blended learning” approach that combines online learning with face-to-face instruction.

Blended learning has drawn both excitement and skepticism as it has exploded in popularity in recent years. Boosters believe that technology could transform schools and give students a more personalized learning experience, while critics fear that when executed poorly, blended approaches reduce learning to clicks on a computer.

This story has been updated

The Chicago Teachers’ Union filed two complaints in federal court Wednesday trying to stop the city from closing 53 elementary schools, arguing that the closures disproportionately affect African American students and would also cause great harm to special education students.

The following infographic comes from AccuWeather.com and explains the kind of damage expected when tornado wind speeds are at varying levels.

This was released a day after tornadoes swept through North Texas, killing at least six people and injuring dozens of others.

The Fairfax County school system is seeking applicants for a position on the influential facilities planning advisory council.

Established in 2010, FPAC, as the 13-member group is known, works with the administration to help develop long-range plans for the school system’s facilities needs. The council also advises the School Board on issues pertaining to transporation, construction, renovations and boundary studies.

A new report about what people called "education influentials" think will happen in the world of education says:

* That 87 percent of insiders think that the No Child Left Behind law won't be reauthorized until at least 2015.