The Choice Channel

“The Brownsville Independent School District in Texas won what may be the nation’s most important prize for excellence in urban education on Tuesday, the same day that Texas authorities announced that the district had failed to meet achievement targets for two years under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Erica Lepping, a spokeswoman for the foundation that administers the $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education, said the 10-member prize jury, which included two former secretaries of education, was aware that Brownsville had missed its testing targets under the federal law last year but had considered many other academic quality indicators in making its choice.” (10/14/08)

http://tinyurl.com/4lnjms

“As the financial world waits for frozen credit markets to thaw, higher-education officials say college students will face unprecedented scrutiny from private lenders as the United States reels from its sharp economic downturn. Students seeking to attend the nation’s largest universities whose loan applications come with credit-worthy cosigners likely will have little trouble obtaining financing, experts say–but community college students with scant or checkered credit histories might be driven to nontraditional payment policies.” (10/14/08)

http://tinyurl.com/47pav8

“On issues such as abortion, gay marriage and religion, college students shift noticeably to the left from the time they arrive on campus through their junior year, new research shows. The reason, according to UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, isn’t indoctrination by left-leaning faculty but rather the more powerful influence of fellow students. And at most colleges, left-leaning peer groups are more common than conservative ones.” (10/13/08)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27167500/

“City officials have agreed to pay for the education of hundreds of students who claim they were prevented from attending regular classes at their Brooklyn high school and otherwise encouraged to drop out, The Post has learned. The preliminary settlement was spurred by claims from former Boys and Girls HS students that they had been assigned shortened schedules and noncredit-bearing classes or else warehoused in the auditorium of the Bedford-Stuyvesant school beginning in 2002. Once they fell behind, some students said they were told they were cut from the school’s register or pressured to pursue a General Equivalency Diploma.” (10/14/08)

http://tinyurl.com/53kvfb

“The state is scheduled to release the names of schools that failed to meet the federal government’s standard for the 2007-08 school year, and schools across San Antonio are bracing for bad news. The number of local schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress — the key measure of academic performance under President Bush’s public school overhaul, No Child Left Behind — is expected to nearly double from last year, when 33 schools missed the mark. Explaining the tumble is complicated, but at the heart, local school leaders say, is a provision of the federal law that requires the vast majority of special education students to be tested at their grade level — not below.” (10/14/08)

http://tinyurl.com/53reco

“If there’s one feature that defines the presidential debate on education, it’s this: near silence. The USA’s teetering economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have all but squeezed out education, a topic important to previous elections. Sen. John McCain focused on it in two speeches to civil rights groups last summer. Sen. Barack Obama, meanwhile, has spoken in detail about schools more often than his rival — his campaign lists 12 education speeches in the past 16 months.” (10/14/08)

http://tinyurl.com/3ud9ux

“Maryland will this year become the 24th state to require an exit exam for graduation. As the state has slowly phased in its tests, known as the High School Assessments, the national debate continues about them in part because the federal No Child Left Behind law punishes schools that fail to raise test scores. Michael Gordon is doing well at Southern High School, in Anne Arundel County, despite a neurological disorder that causes major learning disabilities. By working closely with teachers, he passed all his classes last year. He even made the honor roll.” (10/12/08)

http://tinyurl.com/42c3lr

“Michael J. Osnato teaches school finance and school law at Seton Hall University. His expertise is superintendent turnover rate, parent choice of public schools, school financing and property tax and testing accountability. Osnato is former Montclair Board of Education Superintendent and now directs Seton Hall University’s Institute for Education Leadership, Research and Renewal. Osnato’s research about unification shows a trend to unify schools over 56 years. In 2008, there are 13,500 districts, down from 67,000 districts in 1952.” (10/12/08)

http://tinyurl.com/3nweja

“The size of an across-the-board raise can reliably send shivers down a faculty’s collective spine, especially in times of budget stress. When merit enters the picture, however, alliances can break apart and areas of agreement (that many professors feel underpaid) can suddenly become points of contention.” (10/10/08)

http://tinyurl.com/4bvvuq

“Americans may like to make fun of girls who are good at math, but this attitude is robbing the country of some of its best talent, researchers reported on Friday. They found that while girls can be just as talented as boys at mathematics, some are driven from the field because they are teased, ostracized or simply neglected.” (10/10/08)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27121982/