Education News from Washington Post

In another mark of the increasingly digital life of teenagers, more than 25 percent of those who dated said their love interests threatened or harassed them online or using texts, according to a new study said to be the most comprehensive look at the phenomenon.

Fifth-grade teacher Megan Allen, who was the Florida Teacher of the Year in 2010, testified before the U.S. House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on Thursday about the effects on high-needs students if Congress allows automatic 5 percent funding cuts to go into effect on March 1.

The National Center for Education Statistics released a new analysis Thursday that looks at how public school students in the five largest states performed in math and reading tests between 1990 and 2011. The report also included a few years of science test results.

Schools across the country are sending out pink slips as they brace for the possibility of deep federal budget cuts that could take effect next week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday.

Duncan criticized Congress for failing to reach a deal to stop the across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, which could force thousands of teachers out of their jobs.

Montgomery County’s schools chief has reduced his budget request from the county in the wake of an unexpected increase in state school funding. But he is also seeking more money to fund new teacher positions, professional training and the expansion of some school programs.

Tricia Pietravalle remembers her days in preschool: Playing in the sandbox, doing some painting, listening to stories. So when she met with her son’s preschool teachers, she was taken aback when they showed her “this whole grid of how they’re evaluating him, academically, socially, emotionally.”

A second 18-year-old has died after being shot late Tuesday afternoon along with a companion, a Suitland High School student, also 18, who died at the scene of the violence in a Forestville apartment complex.

Maryland high school students ranked first in the nation for their scores on Advanced Placement exams, a key measure of college preparedness, while Virginia’s graduating seniors last spring slipped from third nationally to fifth, according to results released Wednesday.

Many factors affect how well students do in school, but among them are how the students themselves approach their work and learning. Here are some of the habits of successful students at High Technology High School in Lincroft, New Jersey, which was ranked the #1 STEM high school in the nation by U.S. News last year (for those who think rankings have any value). This was written by Jonathan Olsen (@jonathanaolsen) and Sarah Mulhern Gross (@thereadingzone), who team-teach an integrated humanities program to ninth grade students at High Technology. Jonathan and Sarah are regular contributors to the New York Times Learning Network. Jon ,the district's curriculum coordinator, teachers world history; Sarah, a National Board Certified teacher, teaches English. They have both been honored as Teachers of the Year by their school.

My long-time friend and source Ken Bernstein, known as teacherken to his many online fans, produced the most-read article on the Post’s Web site recently. He apologized to college professors for our high schools’ failure to prepare students “for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them.”

If you listen to folks such as Bill Gates and Al Gore and Carlos Slim Helu talk about Salman Khan, it would be understandable if you thought that the founder of the online Khan Academy is an education miracle worker.

"It's crazy that in a system that is meant to teach and help the youth there is no voice from the youth at all." That's the opening line in a video called "If students designed their own schools," about The Independent Project, a high school semester designed and implemented entirely by students.

The nation must act urgently to close the achievement gap between poor and privileged children by changing the way public schools are financed, improving teacher quality, investing in early-childhood education and demanding greater accountability down to the local school board level, according to a report issued Tuesday by an expert panel.

When Barack Obama was elected president four years ago, many people in the education world had hoped he would pick as his education secretary Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor who was the head of his first education transition team and who is an expert on educational equity. Pushed by pro-school choice forces to pass over her, Obama selected Arne Duncan, who has presided over a school reform agenda with standardized test-based accountability as its focus. Issues of equity and the role of poverty in student achievement not only got short shrift, but it became popular among school reformers to say that people who insisted that poverty could not be ignored were merely providing excuses for bad teachers.

What is wrong with the following tweet from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, the state education agency for the District of Columbia?

It was tweeted last Friday, and the problem was just raised by Erich Martel, a retired D.C. high school history teacher.

Cozy. Justin Hamilton, who recently left the U.S. Department of Education, where he served as press secretary for Secretary Arne Duncan, has gone to work for Amplify, the online education company owned by Rupert Murdoch and run by Joel Klein.

Students from Poolesville High School took second and third place in a national design competition aimed at helping individuals with developmental disabilities.

The second-place team from Poolesville took home $3,000 for a device to help employees at the Scott Key Center in Frederick count and arrange tea packets into boxes while the third-place team received $1,000 for their cradle made out of PVC pipe. The cradle is designed to keep rain barrels from rolling around as employees wash them.

Brian Donlon took notes in a fat three-ring binder, a veteran teacher critiquing the work of a less experienced peer. He learned the young teacher gets visibly frazzled during instruction and sometimes gives students answers to questions without encouraging them to think on their own.