A Georgia school system partnered with local manufacturers to create German-style apprentice programs that teach skills through project-based learning. A district on Florida's west coast expanded manufacturing internships with help from small businesses. And in Tennessee, high school students are developing high-tech skills and earning college credit at a Volkswagen automobile factory. School districts are […]
Neither Principal Mike Havener nor any of his administrators preview stories the students at Kirkwood High School produce for their TV broadcast, or for The Kirkwood Call newspaper or its website. Giving the high school journalists in the suburban-St. Louis district leeway to create stories that occasionally upset readers (even administrators) teaches them the full […]
Efforts to implement new high school graduation exams in Ohio and New Jersey are faltering, as some educators grow more concerned about the number of students struggling to meet the strict requirements. In Ohio, more than one-third of juniors have yet to earn the scores they need from the seven exams they must pass to […]
While the controversial practice of corporal punishment declines, it remains legal in 19 states. In those states, boys, black students and children with disabilities are more likely to receive physical punishment than other students, according to recent report by the Society for Research in Child Development. The 2016 report found that black children in Alabama […]
More districts are adding seat belts to their bus fleets, following the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's 2015 recommendation that "every child on every school bus" needs a seat belt. Some districts are piloting seat belts on a handful of buses, while others are taking steps to outfit their entire fleet. But there's no federal […]
Illinois Sen. Kimberly Lightford sponsored a new state law that eliminates zero-tolerance discipline policies in schools. Designed to reduce the number of days students are restricted from classrooms for certain offenses, the legislation requires schools to explore other disciplinary options, such as counseling and extracurricular programs, before a student can be suspended more than three […]
By revamping the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law of 2001 with the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, the federal government gives states more control over their own school accountability standards. Under ESSA, lawmakers maintained annual NCLB testing. But teachers' unions had sought to eliminate the "highly qualified teachers" provision, which ESSA did. It's […]
When public school students in Detroit return to classrooms this fall, they'll be attending a new district, created by the state's legislature this past summer. In early June, lawmakers approved a $617 million bailout for Detroit Public Schools to restructure nearly $4 billion in crippling debt. The plan will divide the schools into an "old" […]
In Baldwin Community Schools, students had been returning from summer break having lost more than six weeks of learning—two weeks more than is typical. The district is located in the lowest-income county in rural Michigan, where 94 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Superintendent Stiles Simmons resolved the learning loss issue in […]
Funding cuts since the recession have drained the accounts of rural districts, which cannot rely on a resurgence in property tax revenues as heavily as urban school systems can. Some 9.7 million students are enrolled in rural districts, representing more than 20 percent of all U.S. public school students. And rural enrollment continues to rise, […]
