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With Harvard's Help, Good Grades Pay Off in Chicago

System rewards as much as $50 for A's—and half depends on graduation

(Newser) - Chicago public high schools are paying students for good grades under a program funded partly by Harvard University, the Tribune reports. Freshmen get $50 for A’s, $35 for B’s and $20 for C’s, with half their earnings held until they graduate. Some 20 other Chicago-area schools, encompassing...

Brits Launch Classroom 'Terror Watch'

Teachers asked to watch out for extremist students

(Newser) - British teachers will be asked to monitor student behavior and report any suspected extremists to police under new government guidelines, the Guardian reports. A "tool kit" for teachers sets out how they should conduct classroom debates to smoke out any possible Islamic extremist  or far-right racist views across all...

Prof Argues for Looser Spelling

English-speaking pupils hamstrung by non-phonetic words, apostrophes

(Newser) - A British academic argues that English-speaking schoolchildren waste time learning the peculiarities of spelling, and should be given more freedom to spell phonetically, the Times of London reports. Children studying in languages with more phonetic writing systems, like Finnish or Italian, don’t need to waste classroom time on spelling,...

Web Lets Parents Peek Into School Day

New online tools to monitor lunches, grades, attendance

(Newser) - Parents are taking advantage of new web tools to monitor their children’s activities at school, the Los Angeles Times reports. A California program set to debut next year will allow doting parents to keep an eye on what kids buy for lunch, and let school officials know about food...

Teenagers Have Rights, Too
Teenagers Have Rights, Too
Opinion

Teenagers Have Rights, Too

Schools shouldn't use high court ruling to silence 'disruptive' students

(Newser) - "Teenagers have constitutional rights." That shouldn’t be controversial, but several schools are in court arguing that the First Amendment doesn't apply to students, writes Frank LoMonte in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Morse v. Frederick set a precedent last year, when Supreme Court judges ruled that students could be...

Chinese School-Collapse Critic Busted as Spy

Activist detained after trying to help bereaved parents

(Newser) - An activist who tried to help bereaved Sichuan parents get answers about why so many schools collapsed in May's earthquake has been arrested, the New York Times reports. Huang Qi was taken away by plainclothes police after posting information about the parents on his website. He has been accused of...

Teacher Who Branded Students Fired
Teacher
Who Branded Students Fired

Teacher Who Branded Students Fired

He slammed evolution, burned crosses onto 8th-graders' arms

(Newser) - An Ohio school board has voted unanimously to fire a science teacher who used an electrostatic device to brand 8th-graders with a cross, the AP reports. Science teacher John Freshwater, who says the marks were simply Xs, had been in trouble with the board before for teaching creationism, slamming evolution...

Dutch Hope US Model Will Integrate Schools

Plan was used during American civil rights movement

(Newser) - Dutch leaders believe an integration program honed during the American civil rights movement can curb the racial and class divisions rampant in Amsterdam’s classrooms. Waves of immigrants have swept into the Netherlands, but they haven’t always mixed successfully with native Dutch, reports the Christian Science Monitor. “Segregation...

Family Sues School in NY Bully Battle

Boy posted video on YouTube urging teens to stop violence

(Newser) - Bullied at school, a Long Island teenager posted an anti-violence video on YouTube that racked up more than 15,000 hits. The 7-minute montage by Patrick Kohlmann, 13, urges kids to stop fighting, but it didn't solve his problem. Now Patrick's parents are suing the school for failing to help...

Chinese Police Drag Parents From Protest

100 called for lawsuit over poorly-built schools

(Newser) - Chinese police cracked down on parents protesting today over poorly-constructed schools they say killed their children in last month’s earthquake, the AP reports. Protesters had been chanting “we want to sue” before police dragged them down the street away from a courthouse, with some yelling for an explanation....

China Silences Media on School Collapses

Negative press is hurting shining reviews of relief effort

(Newser) - China has called on domestic media to quit reporting on widespread school collapses in the Sichuan earthquake, the Financial Times reports. Some parents hold the government accountable for poor construction they say claimed thousands of children’s lives, and the furor has hurt the positive reviews of China’s response...

Poorly Built Schools Stood No Chance in Earthquake

Up to 10K kids died; parents blame gov't

(Newser) - As a massive earthquake shook Sichuan province, subpar construction turned many Chinese schoolrooms into the mass graves of as many as 10,000 children, the New York Times reports, and grieving parents are pointing fingers at Beijing. The government, aware of the problem, had issued warnings on school safety in...

Bereaved Parents Question Quake School Safety

Outrage centers on public buildings that survived

(Newser) - Nearly 7,000 schools were destroyed in the Chinese earthquake, and parents want answers. In particular, they want to know why so many nearby government buildings survived while schoolchildren died, the Washington Post reports. “This building is totally a ‘bad tofu’ project,” said one grieving mother. “...

The Nation's Best High Schools
 The Nation's Best High Schools 

The Nation's Best High Schools

Newsweek 's new criteria value APs over grades

(Newser) - Rather than GPAs or graduation rates, new research suggests, participation in AP and IB programs is the best indicator of academic success in college, even if the student does not do well in the advanced classes. In light of that, Newsweek presents the nation’s 100 best public high schools,...

Young Teachers Finding Big Trouble Online

Facebook, MySpace pages test boundaries between public, private

(Newser) - Questionable postings and photos on social-networking web pages are becoming an issue with younger US teachers, the Washington Post reports, raising questions about where to draw a line between private expression and standards for public employees. A case in point is a substitute special-education teacher whose page includes a so-called...

School Supers Draw Big Bucks, Bigger Perks

Turnaround experts find profitable niche in failing school districts

(Newser) - Teachers aren't living in luxury, but some school superintendents are, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Some are pulling in $325,000 a year, plus multi-million-dollar consulting budgets to restructure impoverished, underperforming public school systems. The Monitor calls them "central office rock stars," a product of the No Child...

In Spain, Parents Divorce to Get Kids Into Top Schools

Points system leads to bogus split-ups

(Newser) - Spanish couples will do anything to get their kids into top schools—including break up, the Guardian reports. Thanks to a point-based admissions system that favors children of single parents, Spain has seen a staggering spike in divorces, suspiciously filed just ahead of the upcoming application deadline. Judges think many...

Celebrate pi, It's 3/14!
 Celebrate pi, It's 3/14! 

Celebrate pi, It's 3/14!

Classrooms everywhere fete a most mathematical holiday

(Newser) - Math lovers, rejoice, for today is Pi Day, celebrated in classrooms around the country—preferably at 1:59, which, on 3/14, nearly matches 3.14159, the famed irrational number’s first six digits. “What’s fun about pi is that everyone knows the number,” a math professor tells...

Teachers Rip UK Iraq Lessons as 'Propaganda'

School proposal ignores casualties, 'rewrites history'

(Newser) - On the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a row has erupted in Britain over a controversial school lesson plan about the conflict drawn up by the country's defense ministry. The National Union of Teachers is up in arms over the proposal and is threatening a boycott over what...

Harry Charms Students Into Success
Harry Charms Students Into Success

Harry Charms Students Into Success

Boy-wizard theme helps English school turn scores around

(Newser) - The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry it is not, but a suburban Nottingham school is using Harry Potter’s magic to get results. Primary students chose JK Rowling’s enchanted novels as their curriculum theme, a system school officials launched to raise lagging test scores. Subjects are laced with...

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