Friday EduGaggle

'Tis the season for EduDecision '08. As such, see what candidate Barack Obama has to say about education in his own words.Check out what this New York classroom teacher has to say about linking test scores to job security.Writing to his great-grand daughter and her seventh grade history teacher, Michigan sports writer Suds Sumney gives an engrossing eye-witness testimony concerning his tenth (and

Thursday EduGaggle

Should a Texas student who takes a cell-phone call from his dad (who is serving in Iraq) while said student is in class be suspended because taking that call broke the rules? A lot of issues to chew-over on this one. Enjoy your meal. More tidbits here and there.Our Department of Religious Affairs has been monitoring the interesting case of the public school teacher who is in heaps of trouble for

Wednesday EduGaggle

Special for all you classroom teachers out there: even though our paychecks may not be going up, the prices of just about everything is skyrocketing. (Oh yes, what is being expected of us is going up too...)Ewww! A Pennsylvania elementary school has had a close encounter of the Mold Kind.Did you know that this is Teach For America Week? We didn't either... See some related pics of First Lady

Friday EduGaggle

And now from San Antonio, Texas we have this sorry tale of a high school fight club.Hearthrob Angelina Jolie has issued a call for more and better educational opportunities... for Iraqi kids. (Disc. There's something about that dress she's wearing in the photo that we find uplifting.)In another entry from our International Desk, we have this story that disproves the notion that high school

Memorial Day EduGaggle

Would you believe a U.S. public school that is in session on Memorial Day? Believe it!Today's Knuckleheads must certainly be those teenagers who decided to put photos of their high school classmates getting drunk and smoking pot in their yearbook. More here.Ward Churchill, Colorado university professor and fake indian, compared the victims of 9/11 to Nazis. It looks as though it was cheating,

Today's EduGaggle

As of 2005, the United States is now spending an average of $8,701 per pupil to educate its children. (New York was the biggest spender on education, at $14,119.) Where is all that money going? (Since the teachers of our California school district now earn less in take home pay than we did in 2002, we know that cash isn't going into our pockets...) And, more importantly, why aren't the taxpayers

Thursday EduGaggle

Let's all salute 14-year-old Caitlin Snaring , the second girl to win the national geography bee!New York City is closing its schools for pregnant girls. Low test scores are among the reasons cited.In Alaska, students from the city and the Outback are trading places.The Wanker of The Day is the well-respected Oregon teacher who, after 31 years in the classroom, tossed-away his reputation by

Today's EduGaggle

EduBlogger California Teacher Guy has gotten the type of awful news that almost all teachers have dreaded at one time or another. Read the sequence: part I, part II, part III and part IV.Today's school prank report: Seems as though one Tennessee high school is suffering the effects from an unexpected infestation of white mice...Don't forget to visit today's midway of The Carnival of Education! (

Morning EduGaggle

There's an ambitious project afoot to provide every child in the world's developing countries with an inexpensive but highly efficient laptop computer. This plan has now begun to turn into reality and get more about the machine here. (Interestingly, their are no plans to provide millions of American school children with any sort of computer...)School Prank Season is now in full gear: Couldn't

Monday EduGaggle

Twin Trouble: A mom is upset that the school system assigned her twin sons to separate first-grade classes without consulting her first.Historical tragedy in England: The world's only surviving clipper ship, the Cutty Sark, has been extensively damaged by fire. Police are calling the fire "suspicious." We call it a crime against World Heritage.Have you heard the one about the knuckle head

Morning EduGaggle

The ACLU is extorting suing one Louisiana school district for allowing the Gideons to distribute Bibles to students. This is what the ACLU is so rabid concerned about:The lawsuit details an instance in which the girl's class was told by their teacher to pick up their New Testament Bibles in front of the school office. The girl ended up in a line with the entire fifth grade, while two men handed

Friday EduGaggle

Florida Governor Charlie Crist, has just signed into law a statute requiring a minimum of 2 1/2 hours of physical eduction each week for students between kindergarten and fifth grade. Middle and high schools are encouraged to provide up to 3 3/4 hours of gym class weekly.A just released study reports that students aren't forgetting as much history as they used to. Or are they? Meanwhile, over at

Monday Morning EduGaggle

California high school math teacher Darren gives a thrashing to President Barbara "Boss" Kerr of The California Teachers Association and wonders why the union is so afraid of testing.Yep. We think that it's a safe bet that nearly all of us can agree that our inner-city schools are a mess, but what's to be done about it? Town Hall's Donald Lambro has some ideas, but they don't involve simply

Sunday EduGaggle

Here's a public middle school that gets it right. (But then again, with the advantages that are enjoyed by that particular campus, why shouldn't they succeed?)The Reading First scandal deepens: Officials who gave states advice on which teaching materials to buy under a federal reading program had deep financial ties to publishers, according to a congressional report Wednesday.While many American

Morning EduGaggle

Students and staff at one northern California primary school are being stalked by... an attack squirrel. Two parents and an 11-year-old girl have already felt the squirrel's wrath... Meanwhile, the four-legged fur-bearing assailant is still at large.In today's story from the Odd Side of the Tracks, we have several college girls who are accused of stealing about 1000 copies of their college

Morning EduGaggle

This is what happens when a large school district doesn't pay its teachers competitive salaries.When an Arizona college professor is threatened with dismissal because he emailed George Washington's "Thanksgiving Proclamation" to colleagues, something is seriously wrong in the Land of Barry Goldwater.Shouldn't a fifth-grader know better than to bring a pistol to school?Ricardo Montalban never said

Today's EduGaggle

Students in one California College have found a new way to raise their G.P.A.'s: they pay for 'em!Here's something for those of us who like History and Things Historical: The lost site of Jamestown is lost no longer. (Traveler's advisory: the ghosts of Pocahontas and John Smith may very well be lurking nearby...)Follow me to this week's midway of The Carnival of Education! Complete your

Morning EduGaggle

New York City school administrator Michael Levy is in need of some serious spelling and grammar lessons.Paul Vallas, 53, an administrator with a reputation for "shaping up" big-city schools, has been hired to take-over the beleaguered New Orleans public school system. Vallas has guaranteed that he would succeed in a city that has had three school superintendents since 1998. (One word:

Morning EduGaggle

English schools are facing an examination meltdown.The Queen of All Testing U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has taken so many EduJunkets fact-finding tours that she is now kinda-sorta blogging about it. In Canada, 500,000 students and teachers across the country will be singing the same song at the exact same time in what they're calling "Music Monday." The purpose? To save Music