NewsTrust - Education - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Conservatives Revolt Over Obama Speech to Students - Political Hotsheet

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Brian Montopoli - Sep. 03 (News) - "The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power," he said.

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Student Debt Grows Dramatically

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Anne Marie Chaker - Sep. 03 (News Report) - Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people. New numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that federal student-loan disbursements—the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools—in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The amount of money students borrow has long been on the rise. But last year far surpassed past increases, which ranged from as low as 1.7% in the 1998-99 school year to almost 17% in 1994-95, according to figures used in President Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget.

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Can a Lack of Sleep Set Back Your Child's Cognitive Abilities?

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Magazine - By Po Bronson - Aug. 29 (Investigative Report) - Overstimulated, overscheduled kids are getting at least an hour’s less sleep than they need, a deficiency that, new research reveals, has the power to set their cognitive abilities back years.

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New Facebook iPhone App ’Pretty Much Done’

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By MG Siegler - Aug. 08 (News Report) - As one of the most popular applications on Apple’s popular iPhone platform, a lot of users are eagerly awaiting the next version of the app. And that wait is almost over.

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Pakistan's Swat children back to school

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Kamal Hyder - Aug. 04 (Special Report) - Children in Pakistan's battle-scarred Swat Valley are heading back to school for the first time since May. Many are returning to classes in buildings damaged by the recent fighting between the Taliban and Pakistani security forces.

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As Charter Schools Unionize, Many Debate Effect

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Sam Dillon - Jul. 27 (News) - Questions linger about whether unions will strengthen the schools by stabilizing their teaching forces, or weaken them by blocking changes thought to raise achievement. Some teachers disagreed. Theresa Furr, a second-grade teacher at the Wrightwood campus, said she opposed unionization. “Every meeting I went to,” Ms. Furr said, “it was always ‘What can we get?’ and never ‘How is this going to make our students’ education better?’ ”

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This is how we let it happen, Ma'am ...

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Heather Stewart - Jul. 26 (News Report) - A group of eminent economists has written to the Queen explaining why no one foresaw the timing, extent and severity of the recession. The three-page missive, which blames "a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people", was sent after the Queen asked, during a visit to the London School of Economics, why no one had predicted the credit crunch. Signed by LSE professor Tim Besley, a member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee, and the eminent historian of government Peter Hennessy, the letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the Observer, tells of the "psychology of denial" that gripped the financial and political world in the run-up to the crisis. The content was discussed at a seminar at the British ...

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The 1976 West Point Class of Generals Leading in Iraq and Afghanistan

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Yochi J. Dreazen - Jul. 25 (Special Report) - The cadets of 1976 graduated from West Point at a low moment for the army and its storied training ground. But that year produced the generals running the nation’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as their key deputies. What happened?

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Gates's liberal college town no stranger to racial dust-ups

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Patrik Jonsson - Jul. 23 (News Report) - Prominent allegations of racism have been made in the recent past at Harvard and MIT – the two storied universities in Cambridge, Mass.

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Obama Uses Funding to Pressure Education Establishment for Change

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Michael Shear, Nick Anderson - Jul. 23 (News) - The pressure campaign has been underway for months as Education Secretary Arne Duncan travels the country delivering a blunt message to state officials who have resisted change for decades: Embrace reform or risk being shut out.

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Christian right aims to change history lessons in Texas schools

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Chris McGreal - Jul. 22 (News Report) - The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state's education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God. Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state's history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America's moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue.

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Air Force Academy gets gay board member - Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Jul. 16 (News Report) - The U.S. Air Force Academy has a gay member on its Board of Visitors. Colorado Democratic Rep. Jared Polis was named to the board Wednesday. Polis became the first openly gay man elected to Congress as a non-incumbent last year.

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'Mancession': Economy Is Bad for Men and Women

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Nancy Cook - Jul. 16 (Special Report) - while it's true that the "Great Recession" has hurt guys like Addison, these aren't exactly boom times for women. True, women have suffered fewer job losses than men, but overall they still earn only 78 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to Center for American Progress. Much of their work is concentrated in lower-paid industries such as retail, hospitality, education, nonprofits and health care.

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Culture Wars Hit History Classes in Texas

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Stephanie Simon - Jul. 15 (News Report) - The curriculum culture wars have taken a new twist, with a brewing controversy in Texas about how much of the Bible belongs in American history.

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California Schools Quake From Budget Cuts

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Public Radio - By Carrie Kahn - Jul. 14 (News Report) - As California tries to fill a $26 billion budget gap, any solution is likely to involve more cuts in education spending. The state's public schools have already been hit hard with layoffs, canceled programs and overcrowded classrooms.

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Death in the dorms: Iranian students recall horror of police invasion

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Saeed Kamali Dehghan - Jul. 13 (News Report) - They came in the small hours, just as the dormitories were settling down for the night. Outside, Tehran was still in ferment, a city gripped by fury two days after a "stolen election". Inside the dorms on Amirabad Street, students were trying to sleep, though nerves were jangling; just hours earlier several had been beaten in front of the main gate to the university. What happened next developed into one of the seminal events of Iran?s post-election unrest: police broke locks and then bones as they rampaged through the dormitories, attacked dozens of students, carted off more than 100 and killed five. The authorities still deny the incursion took ...

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Chips in official IDs raise privacy fears

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Todd Lewan - Jul. 11 (Poll) - -- Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he’d bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.

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Md. School Joins Test of Online Courses Tailored to Girls

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Jul. 06 (News) - One expert on single-sex education said it might be possible to design an online course in a way that would benefit girls, but she cautioned that she hadn't found that simply separating the sexes, whether in the classroom or on the Internet, is inherently beneficial.

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BBC NEWS | Americas | California in 'fiscal emergency'

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By BBC Media - Jul. 02 (News Report) - Democrats and the governor, and the Republican lawmakers who take pride in never voting in favour of any budget, have set us on a road toward two possible cataclysms: a popular revolt that will further diminish the power of government as we know it, and ruinous default that keeps the recession alive for another decade and plunges Californians, and perhaps all Americans, into nearly unimaginable misery.

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