Education News from Washington Post

A sampling of Fairfax County freshmen outperformed their peers across the country on a new test that measures how students compare around the world in math, reading and science. But the assessment also showed that the majority of the Fairfax students were unhappy with their teachers and found them unhelpful.

Congress has approved a short-term spending measure that will not only avert a government shutdown, but also will end a freeze on college financial-aid payments for hundreds of District students.

The federally funded D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program provides more than 6,000 high school graduates with between $1,250 and $5,000 per semester to pay for college.

The Prince George’s County teachers’ union released a statement to its members Wednesday rallying them against a proposed takeover of the county school system, saying that the plan takes away employees’ negotiating rights.

School officials in Alexandria have cleared a disciplinary incident from the record of a 10-year-old boy who was arrested in February for showing a toy gun to students on his bus, according to the family and a lawyer.

In Alabama, a 1992 state law requires that sex education teachers tell students that homosexuality is a crime and that it is "not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public." Now two Alabama students have started a petition on change.org in support of a bill introduced in the state legislature to repeal the law. (See video below)

Just when you think there are no other ways to pervert the use of high-stakes standardized test scores, school reformers show just how creative they are.

Its not enough, apparently, to judge students, teachers, principals, schools, districts and states, on test scores, not to mention the Education Department's proposal to evaluate education schools based on the test scores earned by the students of their graduates. (Got that?) Now Louisiana Education Superintendent John White has come up with a novel idea: He wants to link the funding for students labeled "gifted" to how well they do on standardized tests. Really. Money for test scores.

D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray on Thursday named Abigail Smith, a former Teach for America executive with leadership experience in both traditional D.C. schools and charters, as the city’s next deputy mayor for education.

To hear some people talk, you'd think technology is going to save public education. Really? Here's a caution post from 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 the Classroom: Change without Reform in American
Education." This appeared on his School Reform and Classroom Practice blog.

The months-long federal budget showdown on Capitol Hill has forced District officials to freeze college financial-aid payments for more than 1,300 D.C. high school graduates, leaving those students struggling to pay tuition and make ends meet.

INDIANAPOLIS — When Butler University made it to the finals of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2010 — and again in 2011 — it was the smallest school to do so in the history of the modern tournament, prompting swarms of people to Google “Where is Butler?”

A recent survey taken in California showed that a majority of voters there believe that the best approach to preventing violence in schools is through improving mental health services and emergency response training for school staff. But in the midst of a national debate about how to keeps kids in school safe, one thing we aren't hearing much about is the serious shortage of school counselors.

There is increasing criticism about the Common Core State Standards as they are being implemented around the country, including from supporters of the initiative. Here's one such piece, by Stephen Lazar, a founding teacher at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, where he teaches Social Studies. A National Board certified teacher, he blogs at Outside the Cave. Stephen is also one of the organizers of Insightful Social Studies, a grass roots campaign of teachers to reform the newly proposed New York State Social Studies standards. This appeared on the Shanker Blog.

I complained recently that college professors too often wrongly dismiss high school teachers as being unsuited to teach college-level classes such as the Advanced Placement courses so popular in the Washington region. Two scholars from distinguished universities gently chided me for being too hard on their academic colleagues. They might be right.

Are schools for "gifted" students promoting segregation? Here's an argument that they are, from Wendy Lecker, a columnist for Hearst Connecticut Media Group and senior attorney for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity project at the Education Law Center.

The three finalists for the job of Prince George’s County schools superintendent came to town Tuesday without assur­ances that any of them would be replacing former school superintendent William R. Hite Jr. The position is at the center of the county executive’s school takeover proposal, and it is possible county officials could scrap the current search.

School administrators and teachers unions from Maryland will testify Wednesday in favor of a bill that would postpone state reform of teacher evaluation systems.

Supporters of Senate Bill 775 want to keep the Maryland State Board of Education from forcing local school systems to include standardized tests in their teacher evaluation criteria until those exams are aligned with new education standards currently being rolled out in classrooms.

The bottom line: Sixty percent bombed the test. Translation: Of the 50 accomplished adults who took an exam made up of questions from the New England Common Assessment Program, 60 percent received a score that would — if translated to Rhode Island's new diploma policy — put a student in jeopardy of graduating from high school.

Before he became a rock-star drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Chad Smith was a Michigan kid with a hankering for banging on things around the house.

Retired New York Yankees slugger Bernie Williams was a boy in Puerto Rico, mesmerized by his father’s guitar.

Days after 16-year-old Caleb Gordley was shot and killed after sneaking into a neighbor’s house, students at his Sterling school were planning how they would keep his memory alive.

Friends on the Park View High School football team said they wanted to write Caleb’s initials on their helmets. Some students wrote songs for him.

Renowned school reformer Deborah Meier has been having a discussion on her Education Week "Bridging Differences" blog with Eric Hanushek, an economist who is a vocal supporter of evaluating teachers based in part on standardized test scores. In his latest letter to her, which you can read here, he makes this statement: