Education News from Washington Post

Back in 1983, Boston University's public relations folks decided to have a little fun with April Fools'. They called Joseph Boskin, a professor emeritus of history with a particular fondness for the medieval period, and asked if he could be pitched as an expert on the history of April Fools' Day.

A group of Teach for America alumni and students of TFA teachers who are critical of the organization are holding a summit this summer in an effort to organize against the organization that is popular with school reformers.

It would be easy to think that the Atlanta cheating scandal by adults on standardized tests is the worst we have seen, given last week's startling indictment against former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 others under a law used against mobsters.

As spring break begins Monday for public schools across the District, students are fanning out across the globe on trips designed to impart lessons that can’t be learned from a book.

More than a dozen students from Washington Metropolitan High, a D.C. alternative school, and the selective School Without Walls are journeying to West Africa. They will practice French in Dakar, see the shocking pink waters of Senegal’s salty Lake Retba and witness a slice of rural life in the Casamance region.

At the heart of college denial letters lies a paradox.

The admissions deans who sign them almost always express sorrow or regret over their decision to turn down an applicant. And yet colleges seeking to attain or maintain prestige reap an undeniable benefit from the act of denial on a massive scale.

Jenna Kress sat down at her computer one recent evening to check the status of her application to the University of Georgia. The 17-year-old senior at Walt Whitman High School in Montgomery County let out a scream when video fireworks lighted up her screen.

In early January, a group of District high school dropouts opened a plastic tub full of spare parts and a computer. Six weeks later — with some help from professional engineers — they had turned the materials into Fresh T.E.C.H.S., a boxy robot complete with a conveyor belt of orange tubing and a metal arm that expands to 60 inches.

The Virginia School Boards Association announced that Gina Patterson will be the organization’s executive director beginning Jan. 1.

Patterson, now the deputy executive director, will succeed Barbara Coyle, who is retiring at the end of this year.

Here's a list of 50-plus ways that schools manipulate standardized test scores to make the results look better than they actually are. They were compiled by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, a nonprofit dedicated to ending the misuse of standardized test scores, and were taken from actual cases documented in government and reports. You can learn more here about the misuse of tests.

I understand the frustration of Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III over low school performance. I see why he wants to take power away from a sometimes ineffective school board. All over the country, conscientious leaders like Baker are looking for ways to improve learning, particularly for poor kids.

Student test scores are among the lowest in the Washington region. Many classrooms are overcrowded. School buses often arrive late or not at all. Superintendents and teachers often leave after spending just a couple of years in the district.

Here are some excerpts from the 96-page indictment returned in Fulton County, Ga., against former Atlanta Schools superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 others in a massive cheating scandal.

The indictment portrays Hall as the head of a corrupt organization that used standardized test scores to financially reward and punish employees, and it alleges that those involved agreed to lie and cheat and destroy documents to cheat so that student test scores would look higher than they really were.

Here is the release from the Office of the Fulton County District Attorney, Paul L. Howard Jr., about a grand jury indictment of 35 administrators and educators in a massive test cheating scandal in Atlanta. (The misspellings are in the original):

In 2009, Beverly Hall was tapped as the National Superintendent of the Year, hailed for driving up standardized test scores in the Atlanta Public Schools and turning the system "into a model of urban school reform.

Activists trying to halt the planned closure of 15 D.C. public schools filed a lawsuit Friday in D.C. Superior Court, arguing that the closures disproportionately affect poor, minority and disabled students.

A multimillion-dollar budget crunch in Fairfax County schools next year might force an unsustainable workload on the mental-health clinicians who help students cope with stress, anxiety and emotional crises, administrators said.

Famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson is scheduled to make the commencement speech at Johns Hopkins Medical School in May but he suggested on Friday that he would withdraw if students don't want him to because of recent remarks he made slamming same-sex marriage.

The outspoken Michelle Rhee appears to be uncomfortable talking about where her children go to school in Nashville. Public or private? And why does it matter?

Her reluctance is detailed in this Los Angeles Times piece by Michael Mishak headlined, "Michelle Rhee, 'a public school parent?' " Mishak reports that Erin Shaw, a spokesman for Rhee's StudentsFirst anti-union organization, told the Times, "She is a public school parent." Based on that, the paper reported in an earlier story that her daughters attend public school in Nashville, where their father, Kevin Huffman, works as state commissioner of education. Rhee's husband is Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Education activists opposed to corporate-based school reform are converging on Washington D.C. next week for the second annual United Opt Out National event on the grounds of the U.S. Education Department. Among those who will be speaking at the event are education historian Diane Ravitch, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, veteran educator Deborah Meier, and early childhood expert Nancy Carlsson-Paige.

David Pinder, named D.C. Public Schools’ 2012 principal of the year for his leadership of award-winning McKinley Technology High School, said Thursday that he plans to leave his post in June.

He will become executive director of the Washington office of New Leaders, a nonprofit group that trains aspiring principals in urban school systems across the country.