iflove Archive for the 'Education News' Category

Beginning driver Ashley Crawford grips the worn gray steering wheel and warily begins maneuvering the 1999 Ford Escort through a set of bright orange traffic cones outside Killian Senior High School. She considers herself lucky: Because of budget cuts, many schools around the country are leaving driver’s ed by the side of the road. They are cutting back on behind-the-wheel instruction or eliminating it altogether, leaving it to parents to either teach their teenagers themselves or send them to commercial driving schools.

Jones Senior High School has one of the best boys’ basketball teams in eastern North Carolina, but its gymnasium is on the verge of collapse. In March, engineers found that the walls and roof don’t meet the state’s building code and that “moderate- to high-wind velocities could threaten the stability of the structures.”

As colleges add green majors and minors, classes fill up. Nationwide, more than 100 majors, minors or certificates were created this year in energy and sustainability-focused programs at colleges big and small, says the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. That’s up from just three programs added in 2005.

Schools could learn lessons on food safety. As Congress and the Obama administration seek new ways to assure the safety of food served to the nation’s schoolchildren, the most promising paths are no secret.

A federal judge has postponed school unitary hearings on whether the North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts have met their desegregation obligations.

Tom Burnham, who will take over for his second stint as superintendent of education in January, says lawmakers should allow the state Board of Education to consolidate districts that it takes over and to establish charter schools in those districts. Mississippi law gives the state board authority to take over chronically low-performing districts.

Hawaii Officials that represents teachers announced Monday that they have agreed to reduce the number of furlough days in the current school year.

It’s school reform time again for Ky. classrooms. State officials are considering making changes to Kentucky’s public education standards that are as significant as those made when the Kentucky Education Reform Act was passed 20 years ago.

University Branches in Dubai Are Struggling. The collapse of Dubai’s economy has left the outposts of Michigan State University and the Rochester Institute of Technology in the United Arab Emirates struggling to lure enough qualified students to survive.

Lincoln Gordon was the American ambassador to Brazil in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and the president of Johns Hopkins University in the late 1960s, died on Saturday at an assisted-living home near Washington. He was 96.