Two weeks after Facebook’s founder promised $100 million to improve Newark schools, students used Facebook to organize a protest against their high school’s inability to control gangsta, rodent and insect infestations.
On Thursday, students at Barringer High School in Newark walked out of class in protest, saying their school is unsafe and unsanitary.
Students tell The Star-Ledger of Newark there are rats, mice, cockroaches, spiders, guns and
As a Muslim and a high school senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, 17-year-old Dunia Kassay faces a tough choice every year on Islamic holy days: go to school or stay home to be with family and friends.
If she stays home, Kassay says, she will be forced to play catch-up and make up her school assignments. But if she goes to school, she will be neglecting what she feels is her religious obligation on holidays such as Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting.
“It’s really conflicting,’’ Kassay said. “Instead of fasting for a month and enjoying
Margaret Fortune, who spearheaded the controversial drive to remake Sacramento High School into a charter school, is planning to open 10 charter schools in Sacramento County aimed at improving the academic achievement of African American students.
"We have to do something dramatic to close the African American achievement gap in this county," said Fortune, who is a former education adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. "If we do that, we will have a statewide impact because
"Green Dot is one of the stars of this [charter] movement. Despite the fact that many of its 17 schools serve desperately poor, minority neighborhoods, its students significantly outperform their traditional school counterparts, on just about every academic measure, including the percentage of children who go on to four-year colleges. "Green Dot currently operates 18 schools in Los Angeles and one in the Bronx, according to its website. Yet Green Dot has already had to close one of the first five charters it started, due to poor performance. According to the LA Times, the achievement results at another of its schools, Locke high school, have been "lackluster",
Sunday's Washington Post features How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders. I will be blunt. It is anti-teacher, anti-teacher union. My good friend Anthony Cody rightly calls it A Manifesto of Error Consider only this:
The glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher -- and our discomfort as a society with criticizing anyone who chooses this noble and difficult profession -- has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future.
That is baloney. Any administration doing its job can move incompetent teachers, (a) would not hire them or (b) allow them to get tenure in the first place.
I refuse to quote more. Instead let me offer a different and better vision, written 20 years ago by Ken Goodman, and titled A Declaration of Professional Conscience for Teachers.
PLEASE - keep reading
This link, identical to that above the fold, will take
In late September, the Illinois State Board of Education released draft rules raising the standards for principal and assistant principal preparation. Now, the rules face public comment, and some universities have pledged to oppose them.
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NEW YORK—A spate of teen suicides linked to anti-gay harassment is prompting school officials nationwide to rethink their efforts against bullying -- and in the process, risk entanglement in a bitter ideological debate.
The conflict: Gay-rights supporters insist that any effective anti-bullying program must include specific components addressing harassment of gay youth. But religious conservatives condemn that approach as an unnecessary and manipulative tactic to sway young people's views of homosexuality.
It's a highly emotional topic. Witness the hate mail -- from the left and right -- directed at Minnesota's Anoka-Hennepin School District while it reviews its anti-
