NewsTrust - Education - Most Recent Stories

Illinois data on stimulus-related jobs saved, created don't add up

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Chicago Tribune - By Bob Secter, Erika Slife - Nov. 04 (News Report) - More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers. Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers. "That other number, I don't know where that came from," said Lauri Hakanen, superintendent of North Chicago Community Unit Schools District 187. The Obama administration last week released the first round of data designed to underpin the worthiness of its economic stimulus plan, which so far has directed $1.25 billion to Illinois schools. That money has helped save or create 14,330 school jobs in the state, the administration claimed.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

75 Percent of Young Americans Are Unfit for Military Duty

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

sphere.com - By Andrea Stone - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - Are America's youth too fat, dumb or dishonest to defend the nation against its enemies?

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Why We're Failing Math and Science

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Oct. 26 (Interview) - The U.S. lags far behind other developed countries at the K-12 level in terms of measured performance in math and science courses. What can be done to change that?

NewsTrust Rating: 3.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Tamar Lewin - Oct. 24 (News Report) - The Walt Disney Company is offering refunds for its “Baby Einstein” videos, a tacit admission that they did not increase intellect.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The New Untouchables

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - Those who create services, opportunities and ways to recruit work can compete on the world market. That is the key to understanding our education challenge today.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Democrats should take Obama's lead and push harder for education reform

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. Yet Democrats have too often resisted reform as disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

From North Carolina, a model of how to transform education

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Oct. 16 (News Analysis) - In small numbers, in an ordered environment, these poor children can quickly be brought up to the level of the rest, and indeed exceed them in many cases. But when they form the majority of a school's pupils, the teachers can't cope, discipline breaks down, and learning stops. A school for poor children soon becomes a poor school.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Prospects for No Child Left Behind

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

epi.org - By Richard Rothstein - Oct. 13 (Opinion) - Many critics of NCLB have been dismayed by Duncan’s apparent resolve. But they may be reacting too soon. The principles for re-authorization that Duncan has announced represent a radical departure from NCLB and open uncharted territory in education policy.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Uneducated American

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Oct. 09 (Opinion) - ...in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education. But that was then. The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average - 8 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Op-Ed Columnist: The Uneducated American

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Oct. 09 (Opinion) - Education in America, suffering for years, is about to get much worse thanks to cuts caused by the financial crisis...Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Tom Coburn picks on political science

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Daniel W. Drezner - Oct. 08 (Comment) - OK, dear readers, I want you to close your eyes and imagine a world in which your entire knowledge of political behavior emanated only from CNN, pollsters, pundits, historians, candidates, and political parties.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

College for $99 a Month

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Carey - Oct. 05 (Special Report) - Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Evolution Of Technology In Schools

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Daniel Brusilovsky - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - Schools try to keep up with the current technology trends, especially in Silicon Valley, the home of technology innovation. You would think that schools in Silicon Valley would be the most up to date on technology—with the latest computers, projectors, drawing boards—but coming from a first hand perspective, as a student at a local school, it’s the complete opposite. I go to a high school where there are no technology classes that even teach students the basics of web development, or video production, or anything of that matter.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Banning a Book Near You

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Connie Schultz - Sep. 30 (Opinion) - Hopkins told me she has received thousands of letters from teenagers who say her books helped them turn their lives around. She also said she is seeing an uptick in attempts by individual parents to ban books by her and other authors, and she thinks she knows why.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Indoctrination or education

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Lou Dobbs - Sep. 30 (Interview) - Politics are moving into the classroom -- and perhaps more. A pair of educators discuss.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Tough - Sep. 27 (Special Report) - Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function. Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent way, to hold relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive psychologists have come to believe that executive function, and specifically the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vexing questions in education today.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Elite Saudi university set to open

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - Sep. 24 (News Report) - Saudi Arabia has set up a new research university, a multibillion dollar co-educational venture built on the promise of scientific freedom.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Spanking Linked to Lower IQ in Children

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

medscape.com - By Janis C. Kelly - Sep. 24 (Research) - Groundbreaking research suggests children who are spanked have lower IQs than those who are not, and that the difference is large enough to lower national IQ scores in countries where corporal punishment of children is routine.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Rural Brain Drain

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Patrick J. Carr, Maria J. Kefalas - Sep. 24 (Special Report) - American youth are abandoning the Midwest's small towns. The sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas explore causes and remedies.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Raymond J. Learsy: T.Friedman's Take On 'Wimps" and "The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys"

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Raymond J. Learsy - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - All this raises a much more fundamental question: Given our current structure of government and the way it functions, how are we going to compete, and to hold our own in years to come as we go head to head with societies that are far better equipped to deal with the exigencies of the future and the long-term planning that is essential is to meeting the challenges ahead? Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-j-learsy/tfriedmans-take-on-wimps_b_294370.html

NewsTrust Rating: 4.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Must-know figures could change for Texas students

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By April Castro - Sep. 16 (News Report) - Does civil rights activist Cesar Chavez belong alongside Benjamin Franklin as an example of a model American citizen? Should Texas schoolchildren be required to identify Rush Limbaugh? How big a place does the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall — most famous for his victory in integrating the nation's schools — deserve in the history books? The conservative-dominated Texas State Board of Education debates changes beginning Thursday to the social studies curriculum of the state's 4.6 million K-12 students, and both conservatives and liberals say the other is attempting to rewrite history

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Even Babies Discriminate: A NurtureShock Excerpt

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman - Sep. 14 (Review) - Vittrup sent a third of the families home with multiculturally themed videos for a week, such as an episode of Sesame Street in which characters visit an African-American family's home, and an episode of Little Bill, where the entire neighborhood comes together to clean the local park.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Which High School Students Are Most Likely to Graduate From College? - Yahoo! News

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

U.S. News & World Report - By Kim Clark Kim Clark - Sep. 10 (Review) - Parents: Stop fretting so much about which high school your youngsters attend or how they score on the SATs. If you want your student to make it to a bachelor's degree, it's far more important for him or her to earn at least B's in high school and reach for the best possible college. Oh, and saving a few thousand bucks by sending your kid to a community college could turn out to be an expensive mistake.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Big Food vs. Big Insurance

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Michael Pollan - Sep. 09 (Opinion) - The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

An Army of Home-Schooled "Christian Soldiers" On a Mission to "Take Back America for God"

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Kunzman - Sep. 07 (Special Report) - “America is in a culture war. A few good soldiers can make a difference. Equip yourself and come join the battle!” So proclaimed the founders of Generation Joshua, a civics program from the Home School Legal Defense Association begun in 2003. “Our goal is to ignite a vision in young people to help America return to her Judeo-Christian foundation,” its leaders explained. “We provide students with hands-on opportunities to implement that vision.” As I began my homeschooling research six years ago, the birth of Generation Joshua caught my attention. Here was a civics education program aimed at homeschoolers, one that clearly sought to help nurture in students an idea and practice of citizenship informed and energized by their deep religious convictions. Perhaps the homeschooler president of Michael Farris’s dream would emerge from such an education.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer