Education News from Washington Post

Here's a rather unconventional view on cheating. It was written by Penelope Trunk, who founded Brazen Careerist and two other startups. Her career advice runs in 200 newspapers. She lives on a farm in Wisconsin and homeschools her sons. This appeared on her blog.

In this post Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes about how students best learn new material. Willingham is a professor and director of graduate studies in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of "Why Don't Students Like School?" His latest book is "When Can You Trust The Experts? How to tell good science from bad in education." This appeared on his Science and Education blog.

D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) plans to announce seven bills Tuesday that aim to overhaul the District’s public education system.

1. Funding: Raises per-pupil funding for poor children, students enrolled in vocational programs and schools with low graduation rates. Sends 80 percent of schools funding directly to principals to design their own budgets and programs. Fully subsidizes public transportation for low-income high school students.

D.C. Council member David A. Catania plans to announce wide-ranging legislation Tuesday that could substantially reshape the city’s public education system, as he seeks to increase funding to educate poor children, give more power to principals, change the city’s school lottery system and end social promotion of children who are performing below grade level.

Most selective colleges, public and private, profess to seek a diverse class of students. But that is often an elusive goal.

Sometime this month, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on a suit challenging an affirmative action policy in Texas. At issue in Fisher v. University of Texas is whether a student’s race or ethnicity can factor into admissions decisions.

Online learning is our present and our future, or so many school reformers and entrepreneurs say. Here in the first of a few pieces on the subject is Larry Cuban, a high school social studies teacher for 14 years, a district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, VA), and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. His new book is "Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice: Change without Reform in American Education." This post appeared on his blog.

From Page 101 of "Cognition: From Memory to Creativity," by Robert S. Weisberg and Lauretta M. Reeves:

Rote repetition can result in some information being retained, although it is not a particularly effective method of encoding information into memory.

Seven years ago, when I first wrote about Paula Lazor’s teenage son ,John, his future was uncertain. My headline read: “Bright, But Falls Asleep in Class.”

Educators at both public and private schools had helped him for years with his learning disabilities. But homework was still torture and he had trouble following what teachers said. The nodding off in class had begun in eighth grade.

After the Maryland General Assembly approved legislation to overhaul the Prince George’s County public schools two months ago, residents were left wondering what changes would be in store for the 123,000-student system.

Steve Stuban visits his wife and son at Arlington National Cemetery about once a week. They are buried there together, in Section 64, grave plot 2301.

He lost his son in 2011, when the 15-year-old committed suicide amid the fallout of a serious discipline infraction that upended the teenager’s life at W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax County.

When Divesh Rizal laced up his roller skates during Senior Fun Day, the next few moments would speak volumes about the young man’s perseverance and determination.

“It was clear he had never been on skates before, but that didn’t matter,” said Marsha Williams, Rizal’s counselor at Parkdale High School in Prince George’s County. “He didn’t care that he fell. He kept on going. Then the kids were cheering. But that speaks to who Divesh is. He doesn’t give up.”

Does "the great majority" of Americans really support the Common Core? How do we know? Here's a piece on the subject from P.L. Thomas, an associate professor of education at Furman University in South Carolina. He edited the 2013 book "Becoming and Being a Teacher," and wrote the 2012 book, "Ignoring Poverty in the U.S.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Education." This was published on @the chalk face.

Here is a new piece from award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York. Burris was named New York's 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by more than 1,535 New York principals and more than 6,500 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens. You can read the letter by clicking here.

More than 80 University of Virginia faculty signed a letter last week that called upon school leaders to promptly respond to what they called “false and injurious” remarks made by major donor Paul Tudor Jones on campus this spring about the lack of women at the highest levels of trading.

It isn't called a "doomsday" budget for nothing: Philadelphia's School Reform Commission approved a budget this week that includes cuts so drastic that if they are implemented, schools will be forced to open in the fall without funding for things such as paper, new books, athletics, arts, music, counselors and more.

Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp actually published the following tweet on the same day that Philadelphia's School Reform Commission approved a budget without funding for things such as paper, new books, athletics, arts, music, counselors, assistant principals and more.

Yes, there is an official U.S. government position on mermaids and the existence thereof.

Mermaids were in the news in recent days after Animal Planet broadcast a show called "Mermaids: The New Evidence," a follow-up to last year's "Mermaids: The Body Found." The new show earned the station its largest audience ever, my colleague Lisa de Moraes reported here. And, of course, that means Animal Planet won't leave the subject alone and is now considering the next twist in the story.

The winning word in the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night was, as it turned out, "knaidel," a Jewish version of a dumpling.The boy who got it right -- on his fourth successive appearance in the national event -- was Arvind Mahankali, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Bayside Hills, N.Y.

School officials in Calvert County ruled Friday that a kindergarten boy suspended for taking his cowboy-style cap gun onto a school bus may return to school Monday, according to the child’s family and a lawyer.

In the 181,500-student Fairfax County school district, students with disabilities represent about 14 percent of the enrollment but are involved in about 40 percent of all discipline cases, according to school officials.