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Minister calls for children to be locked in school to stop them buying junk food Last updated at 16:47pm on 06.07.08   Children's Minister Kevin Brennan has called for secondary school children to be locked inside school grounds during breaks to stop them buying unhealthy food Children should be locked inside school grounds to stop them buying unhealthy food from shops and takeaways, a minister said yesterday.The drastic proposal comes amid new evidence that the Jamie Oliver-inspired drive to ensure school canteens offer more nutritious meals is being shunned by pupils.Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said secondary school children should...

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is proposing a contract that would give mid-level teachers who are paid $62,000 yearly the opportunity to earn more than $100,000 -- but they would have to give up seniority and tenure rights.....Under the proposal, the school system would establish two pay tiers, red and green....Teachers in the red tier would receive traditional raises and would maintain tenure. Those who voluntarily go into the green tier would receive thousands of dollars in bonuses and raises, funded with foundation grants, for relinquishing tenure. Teachers in the green tier would be reviewed yearly and would be...

GUILDERLAND -- Hundreds of people packed a Guilderland school board meeting Tuesday evening to protest the controversial reassignment of two popular teachers. Dozens of current and former students of Matt Nelligan and Anne Marie McManus spoke against the move even though board members walked out and refused to hear the messages of support in a public forum. There were howls from the crowd and calls to vote board members out of office after President Richard Weisz referred to the involuntary transfer of the teachers to Farnsworth Middle School as a personnel matter that could not be discussed. Nelligan and McManus,...

A Rogers husband and wife who worked as a pastor and school bus driver were sentenced Monday to four years in prison for cooking methamphetamine in their family home. Joseph and Barbara Sisneros pleaded guilty last week to a reduced charge of possession of drug paraphernalia with intent to manufacture as part of a plea agreement between Deputy Prosecutor Drew Ledbetter and defense attorneys Blake Warren and Bobby Digby. "This meth lab was not a small operation," Ledbetter told Benton County Senior Circuit Judge Tom Keith. "Certain people should be held to a higher standard. At best, the court could...

CCTV:New York,June 10/08:A school prank gone wrong on Long Island is caught on tape. Police said a group of students, dismissed early from Uniondale High School during the June 10th heat wave vandalized a 7-11 store. They're seen grabbing items off shelves and throwing items on the floor. According to police, they also stole candy and beverages from the store. Three teenagers are charged with riot and petty larceny.

(06-26) 19:20 PDT San Francisco -- San Francisco public high schools will no longer award physical education credit to students enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, the Board of Education voted today in a hastily scheduled meeting. The 4-to-1 vote will likely cripple the 90-year-old military education program that serves 1,200 students because most use it to satisfy their p.e. requirement. "If students really love the program, they'll take it anyway," said board president Mark Sanchez, who has led opposition to JROTC because of its ties to the military. Gregory Wing, who will be a sophomore at Lowell...

A landmark education program that provides opportunity to hundreds of families in the nation's capital to attend private schools is being opposed by Democrats in Congress. Barack Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in February that he was open to voucher programs, but just last week announced his intentions to squash the DC pilot program. "Barack Obama prefers private education for his daughters but won't give DC parents the same opportunity," said Brian Burch, President of Fidelis, a Catholic-based political, legal, research and educational organization. "Vouchers are Change," he continued. "Rather than subjecting kids to rotting schools, vouchers have brought change...

With the increasing emphasis on standardized testing over the past decade, large urban school systems have famously declared an end to so-called social promotion among youngsters lacking basic skills...Now the 8,400-student East Ramapo school district in this verdant stretch west of the Palisades is going further, having revived a controversial retention practice widely denounced in the 1980s to not only hold back nearly 12 percent of its first graders this spring but to segregate them in a separate classroom come fall. ...the principal of Hempstead Elementary here, said that merely holding back students without a special program to address their...

One of the most ambitious pay-for-performance initiatives in Washington area schools is drawing strong teacher interest and local union support even though many national labor leaders have long asserted that it is unfair to link teachers' paychecks directly to their students' test scores.... ...The program's criteria exclude some teachers from certain bonus pools. Half of the bonus money is tied to scores on state tests given in third through eighth grades and in high school: Up to $2,500 is won when the school meets test score targets, and up to $2,500 is given for improving a given class's scores. The...

Students are performing better on state reading and math tests since enactment of the landmark No Child Left Behind law six years ago, according to an independent study [by the District-based Center on Education Policy] released yesterday.[snip]Because standards vary from state to state, some analysts have questioned the reliability of state tests as a gauge of academic performance. The study, which included data from 50 states, found that achievement on state reading and math exams has improved in most of them. The trend is largely mirrored on national exams, the study found, although the gains tend to be smaller. One...

...Governments from Los Angeles to Scotland may not much like President Hugo Chavez's brand of Cuba-inspired socialism but they will soon try to replicate Venezuela's achievements on their own streets... ...About 200 children gather for four hours of music and choral practice six days a week in what Venezuelans simply call "The System." "The orchestra is my family, nothing has ever grabbed me like this before," said Francisco Henriques, 14, practicing trombone on the roof of his hillside home, accompanied by his cat, Trumpet. "Music is everything I have ever wished for." As well as instilling discipline and self-esteem, the...

Here's how rising fuel prices affect an organization with a fleet of 1,273 school buses: The Montgomery County school board today will consider giving Superintendent Jerry D. Weast emergency powers to make students walk farther to school, if need be, in the coming academic year. (snip) Should prices continue to rise, the school system could save money by raising maximum walking distances for students, because more walkers means fewer buses. Currently, elementary school students walk up to a mile, middle school students 1.5 miles and high school students two miles.

...The professor, Howard Gardner, hopes the seminars will encourage more students to consider public service and other careers beyond the consulting and financial jobs that he says are almost the automatic next step for so many graduates of top colleges. “Is this what a Harvard education is for?” asked Professor Gardner, who is teaching the seminars at Harvard, Amherst and Colby with colleagues. “Are Ivy League schools simply becoming selecting mechanisms for Wall Street?”

The United States has a long and dishonorable history of dumping the least-qualified teachers into schools that serve poor and minority students....The picture has improved significantly, however, in New York City, where state law has abolished temporary licenses for uncertified teachers, raised standards in teacher preparation programs and spawned innovative strategies for recruiting better teachers. [snip]...The qualification index took into account several factors, including certification, experience, the teacher’s SAT scores and the rank of the undergraduate college the teacher attended....Higher salaries have clearly played a role in strengthening the city’s teacher corps. But the state kicked off the quality movement...

In Colorado, taxpayers have a tremendous amount of control over their own property taxes. Thanks to the state’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR), which stunts the growth of property taxes, those of us who own property in Eagle County shouldn’t expect to see our taxes skyrocket at the same rate as our property values without voter approval. This year, however, taxpayers’ rights were usurped by Gov. Bill Ritter’s decision to freeze the statewide school district property tax rate... Not only was Ritter’s move a clear violation of the TABOR Amendment because it effectively raised taxes without voter approval, it didn’t...

Brooklyn teen Quashon Burton thought bringing a laxative-laced cake to school would be "funny" - but he's not laughing now.   After two teachers were sickened and he was hit with an assault charge, the senior is worried his whole future is collapsing like a half-baked souffle. "I'm pretty scared," Burton told the Daily News Thursday outside his home in Brownsville.  "I didn't mean to have this whole thing blow out of proportion. I thought it would be a senior prank that everyone would think is funny." Burton, 17, and pals Tiara Peoples and Kenny Ramirez got the idea to...

Massachusetts High School Faces Pregnancy Boom Thursday, June 19, 2008 A Massachusetts high school is facing a pregnancy boom with 17 girls entering summer vacation expecting babies in what some have called a pregnancy pact. Officials at Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Mass., are investigating whether half of the teens made a pact to get pregnant during the school year, Time.com reported. Officials said that beginning last fall a large group of girls started asking the school clinic for pregnancy tests, the site said. "Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," principal Joseph Sullivan...

U.S. states are being surveyed one at a time by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in order to determine the feelings of residents on school choice. Spokesman Paul Diperna says Idaho is the latest of four states that have been checked thus far. "The broad takeaway is that Idaho parents ... want more [alternative school] choices...," he says. "... [W]e've seen overwhelming support for private schools, charter schools, home schooling, and even virtual schools to some extent," Diperna reports.   According to a press release, 39 percent of Idahoans would prefer sending their child to a private school; 25 percent, a charter...

A new study argues that the nation’s focus on helping students who are furthest behind may [be] yielding steady academic gains for low-achieving students in recent years at the expense of top students. The study...said those at the bottom moved up faster than those at the top.{snip}The report included results of a survey of a nationally representative sample of 900 teachers. Seven in 10 teachers said their schools were more likely to focus on struggling students than average or advanced students when tracking achievement data and trying to raise test scores. And about three-quarters of the teachers surveyed said they...

Students in the D.C. school voucher program, the first federal initiative to spend taxpayer dollars on private school tuition, generally did no better on reading and math tests after two years than public school peers, a U.S. Education Department report said yesterday.The findings mirror those in previous studies of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program...

(NaturalNews) A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.

Students earn way by sweat of brow in new program . Bruce Randolph's bold decision last fall to end social promotion, to inform parents that students who fail core academic classes will not be passed on to the next grade. "We're changing the culture," said Principal Kristin Waters. "You can't not pass anymore; you have to do the work." It's an unprecedented stance by a neighborhood school in Denver. DPS, unlike other metro districts, allows parents to decide whether their children are held back a grade until they reach high school. Few choose to hold them back. Not until grade...

School children of the al-Menahay Primary School pose for a photo at their makeshift school north of Joint Security Site W-1. A house with five rooms near the destroyed school was used for classes until their school could be rebuilt. Photo by 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs. FOB KALSU — For school children in the south Baghdad area, getting an education has become a difficult, even dangerous prospect in recent years. In some cases, supplies were short and facilities were in disrepair. Sometimes the teachers weren’t there. In a few cases, the schools themselves were all...

In yet another example of why the west could be too weak to fight the sort of global terrorism that takes the form of Islamofascism, a textbook monitoring group is charging that American textbooks have been cleansed of mentioning the violence inherent in the Islamic "Jihad." Now, our children will not be taught what "Jihad" truly means, nor that it has been used as an excuse to kill their fellow citizens because our schools have sanitized Islam of all outrage and violence. Will the media follow this story and report that our children are being exposed to Islamic propaganda like...

PORTLAND, Ore. - The exclusion of the Pledge of Allegiance from a southwest Portland elementary school's ceremony has proved upsetting for a local mom. Departing fifth-graders at Capitol Hill Elementary usually open their promotion ceremony with the Pledge of Allegiance but not this year. "I was sad," said parent Briana Reese. "The flag was sitting up there, you know. Two of the kids went up and they said 'everybody rise' and we rose and I thought for just a second 'oh yeah, we're going to put our hands on our hearts and we're going to salute the flag' - but...

Capt. Mark Weber (front left), a native of Curtis Bay, Md., Sgt. Brad Willeford, a native of Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Spc. Gregory Kastner, a native of Nexcilsior, Minn., chat and walk with children on their way to the re-opening of the al Thoha School in the Taji Qada, located northwest of Baghdad, June 5. The school reopened after terrorists destroyed the school two years ago. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. J.B. Jaso III. CAMP TAJI — It was a picturesque day in the Taji Qada, northwest of Baghdad, perfect for the opening of al Thoha school, June 5....

(snip) The largest Protestant denomination in America, the Southern Baptists, is sending representatives from thousands of churches to convene in Indianapolis for the 151st session of the Southern Baptist Convention on June 10 and 11. The church is in crisis. Outgoing president Rev. Frank Page estimates that only half of Southern Baptist churches will still exist two decades from now. The decline appears to be particularly acute among young people in the church. In 2005 alone, 55 percent of Southern Baptist churches baptized no youths, according to Ed Stetzer with the North American Mission Board. "They are discovering, as other...

Fresno, CA (AP) -- The valedictorian at Fresno's Bullard High School won't be attending college in the United States this fall because he's scheduled to be deported. Seventeen-year-old Arthur Mkoyan's 4.0 grade-point average qualified him to enter one of the state's top universities. But he and his mother have been ordered back to Armenia after their last appeal for asylum failed. The family fled from what used to be part of the Soviet Union and has been seeking asylum since 1992. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement says they were given an extension until June 20

El Camino teens face heavy emotions brought about by drunken-driving dramatization OCEANSIDE – It was an elaborate hoax, but 36 students at El Camino High pulled it off with potentially life-saving consequences. The result was a soberingly realistic dramatization about the dangers of drinking and driving, delivered with surprising professionalism. Many juniors and seniors were driven to tears – a few to near hysterics – May 26 when a uniformed police officer arrived in several classrooms to notify them that a fellow student had been killed in a drunken-driving accident. The officer read a brief eulogy, placed a rose on...

RICHMOND - The state has tightened its education licensing system to ensure that teachers who sexually abuse children aren't allowed to return to the classroom. A law effective July 1 will require courts to promptly notify local school divisions when teachers are convicted of felony sexual offenses involving children or felony drug crimes. It also will require school boards to inform the state Board of Education after they fire teachers or accept their resignations as a result of such crimes. School divisions must notify the state when a teacher is the subject of a legally proved complaint of child abuse...

Public school students at Friendswood Junior High in the Houston area have been roped into Islamic training by representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations during class time, prompting religious leaders to protest over Principal Robin Lowe's actions. Pastor Dave Welch, spokesman for the Houston Area Pastor Council, confirmed the indoctrination had taken place and called it "unacceptable." "The failure of the principal of Friendswood Junior High to respect simple procedures requiring parental notification for such a potentially controversial subject, to not only approve but participate personally in a religious indoctrination session led by representatives of a group with well-known...

Unsigned fliers in city schools urge 'job actions' . Not a single classroom teacher showed up for work at a northwest Denver school on Tuesday, an apparent "sickout" staged by teachers upset over stalled contract talks. All 16 classroom teachers plus the music teacher and a librarian called in sick... "I didn't have any warning," Kraft said. "I don't know what the goal is, so I can't really speak to whether or not that accomplished their goal. . . . (But) I'm not sure if leaving your students without a teacher is a way to address contract negotiations." DPS Superintendent...

"Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son's kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class. "After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn't like about Barton's 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher said they were going to take a vote, Barton said. "By a 14 to 2 margin, the class voted him out of the class. "Barton said her son is in the process of being diagnosed with Aspberger's, a type of high-functioning autism... "Alex has had disciplinary issues because of his disabilities, Barton said. The school and district has...

TIPP CITY, Ohio — When 83-year-old Edmund Jackson uses a hand trimmer to clip the grass, one of the 22 pieces of shrapnel in his right arm dances under the skin of his wrist. ---- snip ---- The schoolbook program is designed to spark greater interest in history by giving students an emotional connection to it and showing them it’s made by real people like themselves.

Ethnic food may be removed from government schools in the Italian capital, Rome, in the latest gesture by the city's new centre-right government to target multiculturalism. Laura Marsilio, city councillor for schools in Rome, said the local government would re-evaluate the ethnic menus of public schools, and replace it with what she called "Italian regional dishes as well as typical mediterranean cuisine." Marsilio spoke to the media on Monday and said that the 'ethnic menus', introduced by the previous centre-left government of Romano Prodi "gave insufficient results." Marsilio reportedly also plans to look at centres where parents of immigrant children...

The Perils of the Ivy League by Burt Prelutsky Ivy certainly looks nice, but you wouldn’t want to stroll through it. Here in Southern California, it’s common knowledge that most of our rodents hang out in the stuff. If bubonic plague ever breaks out in L.A., the source will be found lurking in the shrubbery. What has me dwelling on ivy is my recent realization that much of what I don’t like about American politics—namely, American politicians—can be traced back to Ivy League schools. It can’t just be a coincidence that four or five universities keep spitting out presidential candidates...

A couple of stories in the San Francisco Chronicle caught our attention yesterday.1. Suspensions point to trouble in schools California public school educators suspended students more than 332,000 times for violence or drugs last year - a jump of nearly 16,000 from the prior year.... 2. Study contradicts myth of how teens avoid intercourse Please see article link for text... Thank you, Bill Clinton, for normalizing the casual version of that behavior. Thank you to the political/social left for creating the self-fulfilling prophesy of teen sex. (Like the wife who says to her husband, on his way out the door...

When Steven Barber turned in a short story this semester for his creative-writing class at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, his instructor was alarmed. The 23-year-old student had produced an imagined account of someone on the edge of a violent breakdown, touching on suicide and murder. ...

The curriculum at a charter school catering to Muslims complies with federal and state law, the state Education Department said Monday but it directed other changes be made in religious areas. The state said Tarik ibn Zayad Academy should change its busing schedule and its handling of Friday prayer services. The shorter prayer services on other days were found to be acceptable, but not the 30-minute service on school grounds on Muslim's holy day. The department said bus rides home should be available right after school ends; currently students must wait until after a voluntary after-school religious program. State law...

A friend of mine recently wrote to me saying, “My wife is retiring in June after thirty years of teaching. A high school degree means nothing. No Child Left Behind is an even bigger joke. It is a scary situation that could lead us to third world status, but we are prepared for that since we already teach English as a second language.”

An Arizona court has ruled against school choice for parents, forcing them to continue sending their children to failing public schools. A state appellate court in Arizona has ruled that two voucher programs for foster and disabled children attending private schools violate the Arizona Constitution by using public money to help private and religious schools. The 3-0 ruling Thursday by a Court of Appeals panel in Tucson reverses a trial judge's ruling that upheld the programs enacted in 2006 at the urging of school choice supporters. The programs provide grants worth thousands of dollars for students, with the money paid...

Building experts said China's problem, as in many other parts of the world, was a lack of commitment by governments to improve the quality of school buildings. "Schools should never collapse, and hospitals and fire stations should never collapse. These are all civic structures that are needed in a disaster," said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "So when I hear a school has collapsed, I point the finger at politics." This week, so have many Chinese. "China's government buildings at every level are more magnificent than those of developed countries, the...

Since Arizona’s local law enforcement began enforcing illegal immigration laws and an employer sanctions law went into effect, illegal immigrants have been fleeing the state in large numbers. The effects have been far-ranging. Commuters are reporting fewer vehicles on the freeways, shortening their rush-hour commutes. What had become a serious transportation problem in Arizona is losing its urgency. English Learner Language (ELL) students started dropping out of school. This helped end a confrontation between the state legislature and a liberal federal judge who had ordered the state to spend more money on ELL classes. Fewer illegal immigrants are using hospital...

Two cheers to the Seattle School District for eliminating its Office of Equity, Race and Learning Support. I'll award the third cheer if a district spokesman's contention that this move is purely a budgetary fix turns out to be a glossing over of the truth. I hope the real story is that someone in charge came to their senses and realized the Office of Equity, Race and Learning Support would have been better titled the Office of Race Propaganda, White Guilt and Bogus Sociology. The director of the office, Caprice Hollins, gained notoriety for a variety of offensive acts. Most...

A 6th-grade teacher in Jackson, Miss., asked her class to take a survey to determine which of their classmates were most likely to get pregnant, die and contract AIDS before graduation from high school. Now the father of the honor student selected as most likely to get pregnant wants the teacher fired, according to local station WAPT. Curtis Lyons said he found out about the survey when his daughter came home from Chastain Middle School Monday. "She was humiliated," Lyons said. "She's an honor student." According to the father, students were given a survey in science class that asked them...

Students stand in front of the newly renovated Omah Moktar School for Girls in the Qadisiyah Apartment Complex in Mahmudiyah May 8. U.S. Army courtesy photo. CAMP STRIKER — Iraqi citizens celebrated the completion of construction at the Omah Moktar School for Girls in the Qadisiyah Apartment Complex in Mahmudiyah, about 20 kilometers south of Baghdad, May 8. After nearly three months of construction, the Moktar School’s approximately 600 students can now enjoy new windows, gates and doors, as well as new auditorium furniture. Exterior improvements included raising the outer wall as an added security measure.“The educational environment was greatly...

One of the unwritten codes for white teachers teaching in public schools has been that when it comes time to discipline a black student, the task should be left to another black teacher or administrator. This is to avoid the possibility that the student might mistake the discipline for just another display of the Eurocentric-White-Power-That-Rules-the-World-and-Keeps-All-People-of-Color-Enslaved-Hegemony. Sometimes, however, a white teacher needs to make requests in the classroom, like telling a poor, disadvantaged student to turn off the blaring music on his iPod. There are classes and workshops for teachers on how to do this “sensitively.” While being interviewed on National...

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2008 – Citizens of Basra, the third-largest city in Iraq, celebrated the opening yesterday of a central market that demonstrated a return of peace and prosperity to an area that until recently was a stronghold of Shiia militias. Iraqi children watch the grand opening ceremonies of the Jameat Market in Basra, Iraq, May 6, 2008. The children were released from school early to attend the community-building event. Royal Navy photo by Leading Airman Jannine B. Hartmann   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Schools closed early as families from the Jameat district gathered with local dignitaries,...

[Peshawar] Unidentified attackers set fire to a girls’ high school and planted bombs in its science laboratory in the Charbagh area of the conflict-ridden Swat district in North West Pakistan. School watchman, Toti Gul, said that 40-50 men entered the school at midnight and used gasoline to set ablaze nine rooms of the only girls’ high school in the area. “The faces of the armed men were covered and they were chanting slogans. They directed me to take away all the copies of the Holy Quran from the school building. When I did that they set the school on fire...

KARACHI, Pakistan — Praying in Pakistan has not been easy for Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher from Turkey. He tried the mosque near his house, but it had Israeli and Danish flags painted on the floor for people to step on. The mosque near where he works warned him never to return wearing a tie. Pakistanis everywhere assume he is not Muslim because he has no beard. “Kill, fight, shoot,” Mr. Kacmaz said. “This is a misinterpretation of Islam.” But that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and...