Education News from Washington Post

Columbia University on Monday named former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll as dean of its Graduate School of Journalism.

Coll, who will replace Nicholas Lemann as dean starting July 1, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who served as Post managing editor from 1998 through 2004 and is currently president of The New America Foundation in Washington.

Bill Maher clearly had done some homework when he sat down with to ber-school reformer Michelle Rhee on his HBO show, challenging her "no-excuses" philosophy on teachers by saying that he thinks the problem with public education is "poverty and parents."

The obsession among school reformers with standardized test scores and merit pay has led to this: A fourth-grade teacher at a charter school in New Orleans won a $43,056 bonus because her students' scores skyrocketed at a school with a "D" state rating. But there's more.

A newly elected Prince George’s County school board member said Sunday that she strongly supports County Executive Rushern L. Baker III’s plan to take over the county’s struggling school system, saying the board is hampering the schools and is averse to accountability.

By 8:30 a.m., a second-floor faculty lounge is transformed, and the rush is on at Cava Java, a coffeehouse tucked inside a Silver Spring high school. Teachers wait in line to buy a cup of fresh brew, a sliced bagel, an oversize muffin.

My elementary School in San Mateo, Calif., had reading ability groups in every classroom. I arrived in the middle of third grade in 1952, and I was put in the lowest group, the canaries. By June, I had clawed my way up to the top group, the bluebirds.

This time it was the kids serving as proctors and the adults taking the standardized test.

In Providence, R.I. on Saturday, several dozen state legislators, city officials, professors and others sat down for several hours at a library to take a standardized test that was created from actual questions off of the New England Common Assessment Program, or NECAP.

Going to college is tough enough without leading a campaign to stop creationism from being taught in school as an alternative to evolution, but that's what Zach Kopplin, 19, has been doing for several years.

Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III is planning a takeover of the county’s struggling school system, seeking state legislation that would put him in charge of the school superintendent and $1.7 billion budget while significantly reducing the power of the elected Board of Education.

University officials across the country and their lobbying arms in Washington are mobilizing to send a message to Congress: Stop the sequester.

They are, of course, not alone. Many interest groups are irate about automatic spending cuts that took effect this month, chopping indiscriminately across the federal government.

The federal government, long a key sponsor of scientific research in universities, is scaling back support for academic laboratories from coast to coast to satisfy the new mandate to cut spending across the board.

What rights do kids have in schools? This is one of the poignant questions asked in this hard-hitting post by Natalie Hopkinson, who looks at what happens to kids in charter schools who have discipline problems. Hopkinson is a contributing editor to The RootDC. E-mail her at NHopkinson@hotmail.com (and join her and The Root DC for a discussion on Saturday, March 16, from 1-3 p.m. at THEARC for "Schools and Discipline: Is it working? Is it fair?" 1901 Mississippi Ave, SE, Washington DC. This appeared on The Root D.C.

(U[pdate: Book publisher issues statement criticizing Chicago Public Schools)

An award-winning graphic novel about a girl coming of age in Iran -- which is also a Common Core literary text for seventh grade -- was ordered removed from some Chicago public school classrooms, resulting in protests and letters demanding its return. The American Library Association said the action "smacks of censorship."

The U.S. Education Department delegation to the International Summit on the Teaching Profession in Amsterdam just committed to three new initiatives involving teacher evaluation, the Common Core State Standards and equity in education.

For four decades, pregnant teens in Arlington County have turned to a special program in the public schools, where a small team of teachers and counselors help them learn to be good parents and guide them to graduation day.

In the you-couldn't-make-up-this-stuff-if-it-were-anybody-but-Charlie-Sheen category: Sheen has gone beyond his standard vulgarity to urge his "followers" to help him retaliate against the private school where he says his daughter was bullied when she was a student.

Opponents of D.C. school closures said Thursday night that they plan to file a lawsuit against the city before the end of the month.

Speaking at an anti-school-closure rally at Temple of Praise in Southeast Washington, attorney Johnny Barnes declined to say whether he plans to file the lawsuit in local or federal court.

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering closing as many as 129 public schools said to be under-enrolled -- and activists are gearing up for a fight.

The Chicago Teachers Union is co-sponsoring "Citywide Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Trainings" to teach parents, teachers and others protest techniques, including disruptions, occupations and arrests, according to a union press release. The trainings, the release said, are going to be led by political activist and scholar Lisa Fithian, who for decades has been a student, labor and community organizer on a range of issues. Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey will participate in one of the training sessions, which is also being sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement, a group of community-based organizations from across the city.

Here's a piece and a short film about new education narratives from Vicki Abeles, a parent of three and the director of the documentary, "Race to Nowhere," a documentary that challenges current thinking about how to prepare students for success.