Education Blog Month in Review: November

By November, students have settled in to the routine of school. The month of November brought with it lots of education news, from sex education and ethics in the classroom to upcoming policy changes that may affect when some students graduate. Check here to review any important posts that you may have missed. November 3rd Schools Required to Improve Dropout Rates Last month, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced a new set of regulations that are aimed at making high schools accountable for high school drop out rates. November 7th New Plans to Graduate Kids in 10th Grade The last two … Continue reading

Education Blog in Review: November 3rd Through November 16th

Education is a serious topic. Make sure you know all of the current news by reading the education blog. Here is a review of all of the articles posted here in the past two weeks. November 3rd Schools Required to Improve Dropout Rates Last month, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced a new set of regulations that are aimed at making high schools accountable for high school drop out rates. November 7th New Plans to Graduate Kids in 10th Grade The last two years of high school are generally spent preparing for college and enjoying the last hurrahs of senior year, … Continue reading

Schools Required to Improve Dropout Rates

Last month, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced a new set of regulations that are aimed at making high schools accountable for high school drop out rates. The new rules are an extension of the “No Child Left Behind” act, which until now has concentrated on meeting requirements for grades three through eight. Now, high schools will have to be accountable as well. They must meet targets for annual graduation rates and may be fined if they don’t achieve these targets. Consequences include having to pay for tutoring and replacing the principal of the school. Statistically, one in four high school … Continue reading

Will My Child Succeed?

Seems that there is more than enough guilt to go around these days but single parents get an extra helping. I’ve read study after study that says because my daughter is growing up in a single parent home she is at risk. Statistics show that children of divorce are more likely to drop out of high school, get pregnant before they are 18 or be “idle” after high school. A large majority of Hailey’s friends are from single parent homes. Most of them are not pregnant, some of them are, or already have children. Some of her friends from intact … Continue reading

Impress Your Teachers

For better or for worse I’m around a lot of teachers this time of the year (and throughout the coming year). This is the time when most teachers are preparing their courses. They sit and create outlines. They type up their syllabi. They consult the required textbooks for the course they are about to teach. In all of this preparation (something that most take very seriously) there is an underlying anxiety that is manifested from horror stories and past experiences of teaching. This anxiety is expressed normally as a joke to lessen the sense of unease these teachers feel as … Continue reading

No homeschooler left behind act (according to me)

After taking a look at the No Child Left Behind Act, I decided to re-write a No homeschooler left behind act. Here is a summary of the NCLB Act No Child Left Behind requires all public schools administer a state-wide standardized test annually to all students. Schools which receive Title I funding must make Adequate Yearly Progress in test scores (e.g. each year, its fifth graders must do better on standardized tests than the previous years). If a Title I school fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress, it is put on a list of “failing schools” published in the local … Continue reading

National Teleconference to Discuss NCLB Regulations

Confused about No Child Left Behind and the new final regulations that are coming out? Officials from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) will be discussing the final regulations (Title 1 regulations) to strengthen the No Child Left Behind Act during a national teleconference. The public is invited to attend. The teleconference will be held on November 13th, 2008, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET. You can call in any time between 1:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. that day. ED officials will discuss the new regulations and answer any questions that have either been e-mailed in advance or asked … Continue reading