Education News from Washington Post

Add this to the list of problems with high-stakes standardized tests: Technical glitches in several states during the online administration of new exams have been so severe in recent weeks that officials suspended testing in some places, students cried and educators worried about how scores would be affected.

School is canceled for bad weather all the time, but for great weather?

Bob Sampson, the principal of Bellingham Christian School in the metropolitan area of Seattle is quoted by Seattle's KOMO as saying that the cancellation Friday was a reward for students who hadn't had a single snow day all year and that it was a move toward promoting a positive school culture.

Blessed Sheriff took the stage and stared out at the crowd.

She then began her recitation.

It was a picture I had after the war.

A bombed English church. I was too young

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Most public school teachers feel unprepared to teach math and reading to the Common Core standards that are rolling out in 45 states and the District, according to a poll of 800 teachers released Friday by the American Federation of Teachers.

New York state students in several grades recently took new high-stakes accountability tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards (even though there is not yet a Core curriculum in New York schools), and a number of educators who saw the test reported problems with some of the questions.

More than 200 colleges and universities around the country still have space for freshmen and transfers this fall — and they also have some financial aid and housing available too, a new survey shows.

The annual Space Availability Survey is conducted by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling and can be found here. Here's a fact sheet with more details.

How many times have you heard about how lousy American students perform on international assessments in comparison to their counterparts in other countries? Here to talk about why the comparisons are nonsense is Alfie Kohn, the author of 12 books about education and human behavior, including "The Schools Our Children Deserve," "The Homework Myth," and "Feel-Bad Education And Other Contrarian Essays on Children & Schooling." He lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.

Here's an excerpt from a new e-book titled "Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence That Collaboration Builds Effective Schools," which looks at how struggling schools make improvements by collaboration between labor and management. It was written by Greg Anrig, vice president for policy and programs at The Century Foundation, a nonprofit public research organization based in Washington D.C. He wrote a post about the importance of collaboration in building effective schools, which you can read here.

A 1-cent budget decision in Fairfax County could leave the school system with a $30 million shortfall, part of a showdown over the county’s fiscal 2014 finances that has the School Board looking for cuts.

The gymnasium at Washington-Lee High School was transformed into an art gallery last week to offer Arlington County students a new way to experience African American history.

Through the paintings and quilts of local artist Avis Collins Robinson, students saw familiar faces of abolitionists and civil rights leaders such as Sojourner Truth and Malcolm X. They also studied portraits of working people who fought in America’s wars, planted the fields and built universities.

The Montgomery County Council’s education committee approved a financial plan for the school system Thursday that would use surplus money from this year’s budget to pay for the Board of Education’s requested $10 million spending increase for fiscal 2014.

The online education platform Coursera this week announced a new series of free courses to help elementary and secondary teachers improve their technique, with offerings from teaching experts at premier museums and universities.

Salisbury University announced Thursday that an Eastern Shore philanthropy is giving the school $8 million to help build a new academic commons, including a library.

The gift from the Guerrieri Family Foundation honors Patricia R. Guerrieri, an alumna of the public university in Maryland who died in May 2010. It is one of the largest donations in the school’s history.

When D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced in January that she wanted to close 15 schools, she said the downsizing would help create a stronger school system with rich academic offerings, a system that could compete with the city’s charter schools.

Across the country, thousands of college biology instructors give lectures every year on the fundamental biochemical process of breaking down sugar, known as glycolysis.

Are all those lectures necessary? Might a few suffice?

It was a busy day for Benjamin Banneker Middle School students Wednesday.

More than 100 of the Montgomery County students visited the White House to hear some of President Obama’s policy advisers speak. Then in the afternoon, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), Discovery Communications President David Zaslav and actor Kal Penn visited their school.

In the you-can't-make-up-this-stuff category: A fourth grader with severe epilepsy being screened at a hospital for possible brain surgery was lying in bed when a teacher walked in and asked him to take a New York State high-stakes standardized test.

(Clarification: Classes at Semester Online are live)

Duke University just pulled out of an online learning initiative with other elite schools because some Duke professors voted against awarding credit for the classes.

Collaboration in schools is not a big topic in the national education discussion, and that's unfortunate, because it's a key to effective schools. Here's a post on how and why by Greg Anrig, vice president for policy and programs at The Century Foundation, a nonprofit public research organization based in Washington D.C. He is the author of the new e-book, "Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence That Collaboration Builds Effective Schools," which looks at how struggling schools make improvements by collaboration between labor and management.

A new debate about whether computers can really edit essay tests is really about how writing can best be graded. Here to delve into that issue is Doug Hesse, professor and executive director of writing at The University of Denver. He is co-author (with Lynn Troyka) of "The Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers" and of "Creating Nonfiction" (with Becky Bradway). He is also a past chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and a past president of the Council of Writing Program Administrators.