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Dropouts Seek a Boost From Equivalency Exams Numbers Seeking a Degree Swell -- But Gains May Be Limited A growing number of Americans are taking high school equivalency tests in their hunt for any leg up in a bleak labor market. Adult-education centers across the country report backlogs and waiting lists for prep courses cramming dozens of topics and years of lessons into weeks or months. But the potential for a better job and pay that drives many to seek a General Educational Development diploma comes with a caveat: The certificate generally is of limited value unless students use it...

The soaring costs of a college degree are prompting colleges to consider a three-year degree program. Britain has long granted a degree for three years of college. I would like to suggest a one-year degree program. And I don’t mean an associate’s degree. Here are some hard facts most colleges will never tell you and most parents could not tolerate hearing. The general requirements of the first two years at most colleges are what high school should have been. That is what junior should have learned had he not been busy getting high, getting drunk, and being socially promoted. Better...

(Guilford-WTNH, May 12, 2006 8:00 PM) _ It may be a sign of the times. Guilford High School's course in Arabic got such an overwhelming response they had to turn students away. This language course has many students thinking of a future helping their country. They began the school year learning to pronounce the basic sounds of the Arabic language. "You have um a lot of glottal sounds. Like ian, hein and humzah and haha," says Guilford High senior Michael Weston-Murphy. Now students can read, write and greet one another as many people do in the Middle East. Their instructor...

Those familiar with the life of Thomas Edison remember the story of how he left school. Edison didn't do well in school. He particularly disliked math and had difficulty sitting still and paying attention. He constantly drifted in and out of daydreams. He was impulsive, and his persistant questioning and inability to be quiet and wait for instructions exasperated the strict teachers. One day, the schoolmaster, Reverand G. B. Engle, belittled young Thomas Edison as being "addled." Young Thomas was so outraged, he walked out of school and stormed home (something that could get a student arrested today). He complained...

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. - A high school teacher has apologized for asking students to write about who they would kill and how they would do it, and officials said he will likely keep his job. Michael Maxwell, who teaches industrial technology at Central High School, said his request that students in his beginning drafting class describe how they would carry out a murder was merely a writing prompt. It was not clear why he asked the drafting class to write fiction. "I made a horrible mistake that I regret," Maxwell said. "I want to apologize to my students, my colleagues...

Student suspended for singing `threatening' songby The Associated Press SUWANEE - A student at Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwanee has been suspended for a week after a teacher accused her of singing a threatening song in class. Sixteen-year-old Beth Ann Cox admits singing the parody of ``On top of Ol' Smokey,'' but she denies any wrongdoing. She was suspended yesterday for five days. The lyrics that alarmed the German teacher were, ``On top of Ol' Smokey, all covered with blood, I shot my poor teacher with a .44 slug.''

Teaching students to care By Kayla Webley Seattle Times Eastside bureau MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES Fifth-graders Harleen Sran, left, and Samantha Grandy wash lunch trays at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Kirkland, the result of a lesson by Marie Hartford, foreground. Her elementary students dubbed her "the recycling fairy." With her fairy costume — black garbage-bag skirt and shirt, mini-silverware earrings and a spatula wand — Marie Hartford makes recycling fun for students at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Kirkland. Hartford established a recycling program for bottles, cans and milk cartons and inspired students to start...

(AP) EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. A high school student who says she was raped after missing her bus home in 2004 has sued over a district policy that barred her from returning to campus to call for a ride. The federal lawsuit says the policy is reckless because it effectively strands students in a city with "notorious high crime." The girl, who missed her school bus because she was meeting with a counselor, was walking to a bus station in May 2004 when she was abducted at gunpoint by four men and driven to a home, where one of the...

Teacher Suspended For Offering Extra Credit For Wendy's Cups POSTED: 3:10 pm EDT April 27, 2006 DELAND, Fla. -- A first-year teacher was suspended for five days without pay after offering students extra credit for bringing in paper cups from a Wendy's restaurant that he could cash in for a free plane ticket. The Volusia County school district found Scott Keatley, 23, guilty of unprofessional conduct and determined he exploited his relationship with students for personal gain. He was suspended Tuesday night. An internal school investigation found that Keatley, who teaches social studies, gave students extra credit toward their final...

WASHINGTON, DC, April 26, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a ruling by a federal court of appeals to stand that declared public schools cannot censor the religious viewpoints of students in class assignments. The case, Baldwinsville School District v. Peck, involved a school district's censorship of a kindergartner's art poster that contained a picture of Jesus. Liberty Counsel represents Antonio Peck, the student whose poster was censored. When attending kindergarten at Baldwinsville Elementary School in Syracuse, New York, Antonio's teacher instructed the class to draw posters regarding their understanding of the environment. Antonio drew a poster...

Tuesday, April 25, 2006 How homosexual school clubs offer sex to students Posted: April 25, 20061:00 a.m. Eastern By Linda Harvey © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com The mainstream media is sure to spend time this next week on the subject of homosexuality and youth, precipitated by the observance in hundreds of high schools of the so-called "Day of Silence" on Wednesday, April 26. This is the day that students who are "GLBT" – that's "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered" – pledge to remain silent all day to draw attention to what they believe is discrimination. On Thursday, April 27, some schools will be...

Two D's and you're out. At least five Palm Beach County principals' jobs are on the line this year as the school year moves into its home stretch, Superintendent Art Johnson said. Two years, he believes, is plenty of time for middle- and high-school principals to turn their schools around, even if they have long-standing reputations of student underachievement. "My position has been double-D schools get a new administrator," Johnson said. "Sometimes my staff says two years is not enough. At other schools, a principal has made a change in almost no time." Johnson's prime example is Jon Prince, who...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Police said a group of seventh-graders hatched an elaborate plan to cut off power and telephone service to their middle school, slay classmates and faculty with guns and knives, then escape from their small Alaska town. The arrest Saturday of six students in North Pole, a town of 1,600 people about 14 miles southeast of Fairbanks, marks the nation's second breakup of an alleged Columbine-style school attack this week. Five Kansas teenagers suspected of planning a shooting rampage at their high school were arrested Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the massacre in suburban Colorado. The Alaskan seventh-graders...

It's spring, and at the Indian Institute of Management - a premier management school in this industrial town - the campus is abuzz with company recruiters offering fat pay packages to new grads. . Bagging a $185,000 per year offer, Manan Ahuja, an affable 26-year-old lad, coyly notes that his salary package offered by Barclays Capital, a British investment bank, is far more than his father, a Delhi government bureaucrat, earned in his entire lifetime. "It feels great to get an international offer," Mr. Ahuja says. "Beyond the salary, this promises an interesting job profile and great growth prospects." Ahuja's...

Our (Pennsylvania) state legislators can lower our school taxes simply by shaking off the shackles placed there by the powerful teachers' union and approving school vouchers. If parents are given a chance to select a low-cost option, homeowners would benefit because school districts would be forced to reduce taxes. Say the average cost of educating a pupil is $10,000 a year. Give the parents a $3,000 voucher and there will be a saving of $7,000 for everyone who has taken advantage of it. So far, the only discussion about school finance is how to raise more money, most of which...

Parents rip school over gay storybook Lesson reignites clash in Lexington By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff | April 20, 2006 In a controversy with a familiar ring, parents of a Lexington second-grader are protesting that their son's teacher read a fairy tale about gay marriage to the class without warning parents first. The teacher at Joseph Estabrook Elementary School used the children's book, ''King & King," as part of a lesson about different types of weddings. A prince marries another prince instead of a princess in the book, which was on the American Library Association's list of the 10 most...

GRANADA HILLS - State Sen. George Runner and Assemblyman Keith Richman announced legislation Monday that would break up the 727,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District into at least 15 smaller districts. The two lawmakers promised greater accountability would come from community-based school systems, calling the nation's second-largest district a "bureaucratic behemoth" that was failing students. Under identical bills proposed in the state Assembly and Senate, any California school district with more than half a million students - L.A. Unified is the only one large enough to qualify - must split into districts no larger than 50,000 students by 2010. A...

Over the last twenty years, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has emerged as a disorder of importance in childhood. Prescription of psychostimulants for ADHD escalated in many countries through the 1990s. Between 1990 and 1995, prescriptions of methylphenidate for young people increased 2.5-fold in the US [1], and 5-fold in Canada [2]. In New South Wales, Australia, rates of treatment for children in 2000 were nine times those in 1990 [3]. ADHD joins dyslexia and glue ear as disorders that are considered significant primarily because of their effects on educational performance. Medicalising educational performance can help children receive specialised medical...

Test Scores in County Lag Behind State's Poorer Areas Black students in Fairfax County are consistently scoring lower on state standardized tests than African American children in Richmond, Norfolk and other comparatively poor Virginia districts, surprising Fairfax educators and forcing one of the nation's wealthiest school systems to acknowledge shortcomings that have been masked by its overall success. Even within Fairfax schools, black elementary school students are outperformed on reading and math tests by whites and some other students, including Hispanics, poor children and immigrants learning English. The statewide disparity occurs among all age groups except the middle-school grades, but...

State contractor sues subcontractor; police and auditor notified. Sacramento -- Nearly $3 million in public money earmarked for pro-preschool commercials is missing, marking a weird twist in the controversy surrounding a move by a state commission headed until recently by director Rob Reiner to air the commercials while Reiner was working to get a preschool initiative on the ballot. The new head of the First 5 California Children and Families Commission and the commission's lead advertising firm acknowledged Thursday that $2.8 million owed to Spanish-language television stations for commercials aired last fall is unaccounted for. The firm, GMMB Inc., filed...