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Wisconsin is reworking its application for relief from certain elements of a 10-year-old federal education law, based on feedback received from the U.S. Department of Education last month that outlined where the state's application was light on details. A letter from April 17 indicates the state needs a better plan for transitioning to college- and career-ready standards in its schools, and for implementing teacher and principal evaluation and support systems. Wisconsin's plan also needs ambitious yearly objectives for schools and better criteria for recognizing progress over time in persistently low-performing schools. State officials on Monday said the cycle of feedback...

President Obama will waive central provisions of the No Child Left Behind federal education law for 10 states that have embraced his educational agenda and promised to raise standards, and improve accountability and teacher effectiveness, the White House announced on Thursday morning. The 10 states - the first group to receive the waivers - are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Tennessee. New Mexico was the only state that applied for and did not receive a waiver, but it is working with administration officials to secure approval, the White House said.

President Barack Obama is giving states the flexibility to opt out of provisions of the No Child Left Behind law, a move he says is designed to energize schools but Republicans challenge as outside his authority. The law, a Bush-era education initiative passed with bipartisan support, has grown increasingly unpopular as more schools risk being labeled a failure.Under the plan Obama was to outline Friday, states would be allowed to ask the Education Department to be exempted from some of the law's requirements if they meet certain conditions. That includes enacting standards to prepare students for college and careers and...

Twenty-two California schools had their test scores thrown out this year. Nearly half the campuses lost their Academic Performance Index scores because of cheating by teachers. Several others were penalized because of help teachers gave students that violated rules. Additionally, some school scores were rejected because of what appeared to be accidental actions. In most cases, schools or school districts turned themselves in. Because of budget cuts, the state Education Department no longer conducts random audits at schools or scans test booklets for irregularities. The number of schools with invalidated test scores remains relatively small but is edging upward. In...

SACRAMENTO -- State schools Chief Tom Torlakson has asked for a reprieve from No Child Left Behind. Torlakson sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Tuesday asking that California be granted a waiver from the law's mandates, California Department Office of Education officials announced today. "Relief is needed immediately before more schools suffer for another school year under inappropriate labels and ineffective intervention," Torlakson said. Schools that don't meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind over multiple years can be closed or have their staff's replaced. Officials at the U.S. Department of Education announced recently that...

Pastor John Piper and others have told the story of 19th-century evangelist D.L. Moody visiting Scotland and opening his talk at a local grade school by asking rhetorically, "What is prayer?" To his amazement, hundreds of children's hands went up. Moody called on a boy near the front, who promptly stood up and answered, "Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of His Spirit, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of His mercies." Moody, recognizing that as the answer to question No. 78 in the Westminster Catechism,...

Standardized tests in English and math taken by students in New York State are about to become slightly less tricky. Beginning next spring, a new company, Pearson, will write the standardized tests that the Education Department gives to nearly all third through eighth graders. The department switched to Pearson this year after its contract with another company, CTB/McGraw-Hill, expired. The department has advised the new company that catch-all answer choices known for tripping up students, like “none of the above” and “all of the above” and already rare in the state’s tests, are now banned. Mirroring a national trend toward...

States are rushing for the No Child Left Behind exit door. Within hours of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s announcement Monday that he will grant waivers from federal mandates, several states announced that they would apply for relief. Many others are expressing interest, pending the release of more details next month. Tennessee didn’t wait for Mr. Duncan’s news conference: The state sent its waiver request two weeks ago. The mad dash to escape high-stakes testing and gain more flexibility represents “a sense of desperation” among states, said Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators. “There’s no question...

Julie Rogers-Martin had started to doubt her teaching skills. After 30 years in education, working mostly with underprivileged inner-city students, Rogers-Martin felt she had developed a level of competence and professionalism that can only be gained from hard work and experience. Her superiors at East Lake Elementary School in the Atlanta Public Schools system where she taught for six years seemed to agree. Administrators held her up as a model, praising her classroom management skills and use of technology and showcasing her class to parents and administrators, she says. But between 2007 and 2009 a strange thing started happening: Some...

Obama administration Education Secretary Arne Duncan is announcing today a system of waivers relieving public schools from federally-mandated reading and math proficiency tests.

State and local education officials have been begging the federal government for relief from student testing mandates in the federal No Child Left Behind law, but school starts soon and Congress still hasn't answered the call. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will announce a new waiver system Monday to give schools a break. The plan to offer waivers to all 50 states, as long as they meet other school reform requirements, comes at the request of President Barack Obama, Duncan said. More details on the waivers will come in September, he said. The goal of the No Child Left...

A national scandal hit the news when Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal released a 413-page report describing how hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals had been cheating during the past 10 years on standardized tests in order to falsely report that their schools were doing a good job and the kids were improving. A total of 178 teachers and principals (38 were principals), 82 of whom have already confessed, had fraudulently raised test scores so their schools would meet test targets set by the district and thereby qualify for federal funds. The truth came out after a 10-month inquiry...

The Los Angeles Unified School District board has agreed to replace at least half the teachers at a low-performing campus. The board approved the plan unanimously Tuesday despite a rally by students who walked out of Huntington Park High School and marched about seven miles to the board meeting in downtown. The students said the major shake-up would disrupt their education.

A fight broke out on campus at Alabama State University Monday and now a full investigation by ASU's campus police department is underway. The fight involved two groups inside a campus cafeteria. There were no apparent serious injuries. ASU Police are not releasing any specifics because they don't want to jeopardize the investigation. Investigators did say the altercation involved only students. The incident was captured on video, and was posted on You Tube.

In my childhhood, I always dreamed of being a professional athelete. I played football and baseball in high school. Though I was recruited to play football at a local college, my true love was basketball, a sport I did not play well in high school. I apparently lacked the requisite skills to play that particular sport and was not invited to play on the school basketball team. It really was no fault of my own. In fact, some of the factors that made me good at football and baseball were a hinderance in basketball. I was cursed with short legs...

The Testing MessThe fastest way to “improve” students’ performance: Lower your standards.  The only thing surprising about last week’s revelation that the fraction of New York City students passing the state’s reading and math tests had dropped by an average of 25 percentage points is that anyone was surprised at all. Student pass rates dropped precipitously all across New York State for one reason, and one reason only: State education commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch decided to make the tests less predictable this year, and to raise the “cut scores” required for students to reach...

I wore my high school ring for more than 40 years. --SNIP-- I wore the ring (and will wear it again) because although I have degrees from two Ivy league schools and have taught at U.C. Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Duke, Classical High School (in Providence, RI) is the best and most demanding educational institution I have ever been associated with. The name tells the story. When I attended, offerings and requirements included four years of Latin, three years of French, two years of German, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, English, history, civics, in addition to extra-curricular...

Donna Garner is a contributor to RFFM.org. Garner resides in central Texas and was an educator for 33 years before her recent retirement. Garner was appointed by President Reagan and re-appointed by President Bush to serve on the National Commission on Migrant Education in the late 1980's through the early 1990's. Garner was chosen to serve on the English / Language Arts / Reading (ELAR) writing team for Texas when the TEKS education standards were developed for the public schools (1995-97). Garner was also the lead writer of the Texas Alternative Document (TAD) for ELAR when educators grew concerned about...

ATLANTA (AP) -- President Barack Obama is promising parents and their kids that with his administration's help they will have better teachers in improved schools so U.S. students can make up for academic ground lost against youngsters in other countries. A plan to overhaul the 2002 education law championed by President George W. Bush was unveiled by the Obama administration Saturday in hopes of replacing a system that in the last decade has tagged more than a third of schools as failing and created a hodgepodge of sometimes weak academic standards among states. "Unless we take action — unless we...

This week the Senate grinches stole Christmas. The Obama Nation is getting Obamacare. It’s easy to blame the sixty Democrats, as the Wall Street Journal does, for "the worse bill ever." It solemnly declares: "These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command--and control regulation." True enough. But what's the root cause of this permanent disaster? Sorry, friends, but it’s not the Democrats, nor the American people who elected them. The real culprits are two Republicans who ran the show the previous eight years: George W. Bush and his "master political strategist" Karl Rove....