Thousands of elementary students were suspended from public schools last year in Washington and its suburbs, some of them so young that they were learning about out-of-school discipline before they could spell or multiply. Read full article > >

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Suspended from school in early grades

A new study commissioned by D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray recommends that the city turn around or close more than three dozen traditional public schools in its poorest neighborhoods and expand the number of high-performing charter schools. Read full article > >

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Many public schools in D.C.’s poorest area should be transformed or shut, study says; more charters recommended

D.C. public schools have the largest achievement gap between black and white students among the nation’s major urban school systems, a distinction laid bare in a federal study released Wednesday. The District also has the widest achievement gap between white and Hispanic students, the study found, compared with results from other large systems and the national average. Read full article > >

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D.C. schools have largest black-white achievement gap in federal study

Parents across the Washington region will soon have more readily available — and useful— information about how their public schools are doing, the result of new initiatives underway at the local and state level for reporting and displaying education data. The District, Maryland and Virginia are pledging some changes as part of their applications to the Obama administration for exemption from unpopular requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, among them the mandate for 100 percent proficiency by 2014 on standardized reading and math tests. Read full article > >

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New initiatives making schools data readily available

Pressed for dollars, a growing number of public schools are doing what many educators once considered unimaginable: eliminating an entire school day each week. At least 292 school districts nationwide have a four-day week, according to a Washington Post survey, more than double the 120 estimated two years ago. Read full article > >

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In trimming school budgets, more officials turn to a four-day week

City residents remain broadly dissatisfied with the quality of the public schools, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.

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In Poll, New Yorkers Say Schools Aren’t Better Under Bloomberg

District students head back to school today, and at a few D.C. Public Schools, they will walk into brand-new or brilliantly renovated facilities . But at many more schools, students will find smaller but significant upgrades: new salad bars. This year, 27 DCPS schools will feature cafeteria salad bars, about double the number from last year. It’s the latest upgrade to school meals under nutrition chief Jeff Mills , who was hired by ex-chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to overhaul the school system’s dismal food service . Read full article > >

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D.C. Public Schools expand salad bars

[This post has been updated] Outside Marshall Elementary School on Fort Lincoln Drive NE, a cheer goes up as a pair of garden tillers finally kick in after a couple of false starts. Steering one of the tillers is Matt Hendricks , fourth line winger for the Washington Capitals. The team has adopted the school for the year and signed up more than 100 people to paint murals, plant a garden and build a robotics table as part of the D.C. Public Schools annual Beautification Day. Read full article > >

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Volunteers spruce up D.C. schools

If we needed more proof — and we really didn’t — that Congress abrogated its responsibility by allowing No Child Left Behind to continue as the law of the land, we only have to look at Virginia. Virginia is the latest state to experience the huge gap between what test scores actually say and what the law says they say. In newly released scores of the 2011 state Standards of Learning exam, 62 percent of of its public schools failed to meet benchmarks in math and reading, compared to 39 percent the year before. Read full article > >

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Virginia and the NCLB mess Congress left behind

Half a century after many Virginia public schools shut their doors rather than accept black students, the state is offering college scholarships to compensate those whose education suffered in the era of “massive resistance” to desegregation. Among the recipients: white students. Since 2004, about 70 people have won the scholarships, including a handful of white Virginians whose schooling was disrupted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A precise count of white scholarship recipients was unavailable, but the total is believed to be fewer than 10. Officials who oversee the state program say they want to spread the word to more white students who might be eligible. Read full article > >

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Some of Va.’s ‘Brown v. Board’ college grants go to whites

In the mountains of southwestern Virginia, Gequetta Bright Laney taught public high school students this spring about a subject of keen interest to the region’s biggest employer: the economics of coal mining. “Where there’s coal, there’s opportunity,” Bright Laney told her class at Coeburn High School in Wise County. Her lessons, like others in dozens of public schools across the country, were approved and funded by the coal industry. Such efforts reflect a broader pattern of private-sector attempts to influence what gets taught in public schools. Read full article > >

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Energy industry shapes lessons in public schools

The FBI, police and paramedics scrambled throughout the District on Thursday afternoon chasing reports of letters containing a suspicious white powder and mailed to 29 D.C. public schools in all quadrants of the city, authorities said. Initial tests found no toxic substance in the items that arrived in office areas and mailrooms, and “no students have been in danger at any point,” said Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and EMS Department. Piringer said that as of late Thursday afternoon, nobody at the locations had to be treated or taken to a hospital. Read full article > >

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Letters with white powder sent to D.C. schools; substance not thought to be toxic

The FBI, police and paramedics scrambled throughout the District on Thursday afternoon chasing reports of letters containing a suspicious white powder and mailed to 29 D.C. public schools in all quadrants of the city, authorities said. Initial tests found no toxic substance in the items that arrived in office areas and mailrooms, and “no students have been in danger at any point,” said Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and EMS Department. Piringer said that as of late Thursday afternoon, nobody at the locations had to be treated or taken to a hospital. Read full article > >

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Letters with white powder sent to D.C. schools; substance not thought to be toxic

Ousted after just 95 days on the job as chancellor of New York City public schools, former Hearst Magazines boss Cathie Black has opened up about her brief stint in the realm of education. Addressing whether heading America’s largest public school…

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Cathie Black: ‘I’m a Warrior’

On May 31, 2010, Governor Chris Christie’s New Jersey Privatization Task Force reported that more than $210 million would be saved by privatizing work that had traditionally been performed by government workers. The report even set out specific figures for some of the cost savings it identified, while others said savings were “TBD” – “To Be Decided”. read more

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Fuzzy Privatization Math