Education
School district pays for risky bond swaps
The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., published “Risky Business,” a four-part series on the Bethlehem Area School District’s costly use of variable-rate bonds and swaps to finance hundreds of millions of dollars in school renovations. “While the board approved swap after swap on the advice of the administration and former financial consultant Les Bear, no…
Read MoreAdmissions ‘clout list’ outed at Univ. of Illinois
The University of Illinois is re-evaluating its admissions policies after the Chicago Tribune uncovered a “shadow admissions process” for politically connected applicants. “At a time when it’s more competitive than ever to get into the University of Illinois, some students with subpar academic records are being admitted after interference from state lawmakers and university trustees,”…
Read MoreFederal money used for expensive dinners, lobbying
While schools struggle though a budget crisis and freeze funds, San Diego Unified spent more than $2,000 in federal money for disadvantaged students to send its superintendent to a conference in Washington, D.C. “Deputy Superintendent Chuck Morris, who approved the spending, now says charging the federal fund for the expenses was inappropriate and vowed to…
Read MoreAnalysis finds lost students
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found that the state of Georgia does not keep track of all of students, which leads to questions about the state’s dropout and graduation rates. According to the article, “Last year, school staff marked more than 25,000 students as transferring to other Georgia public schools, but no school reported them as…
Read MoreColleges abuse federal law to keep athletic records secret
A six-month Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch investigation found that a 35-year-old federal law created to protect academic records is being used at some schools to shield athletics-related documents including NCAA violations. Reporters Todd Jones and Jill Riepenhoff sent public-record requests to all 119 colleges in the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division 1-A) to gauge their openness…
Read MoreHigher poverty schools get newer teachers
The Statesman Journal recently ran a two-day package that showed how the newest and least experienced teachers in the Salem-Keizer School District work in the highest poverty schools, which was based on a data analysis by the newspaper. Salem-Keizer is the second largest school district in Oregon, with about 40,000 students. Using raw data from…
Read MoreAdvanced placement classes failing to prepare students
Florida Times-Union reporters Topher Sanders and Mary Kelli Palka used open records laws to obtain data on Advanced Placement classes that the Jacksonville, Fla. school district didn’t want public. Sanders and Palka used the data to compare students’ performance in AP classes, and on the national AP exam and the state’s standardized test, the Florida…
Read MoreCalifornia schools struggle to deal with problem teachers, staff
A series in the Los Angeles Times examines how effectively districts across California are dealing with teachers and other staff who are failing their students. In the Los Angeles Unified school district, “about 160 instructors and others get salaries for doing nothing while their job fitness is reviewed. They collect roughly $10 million a year,…
Read MoreNew teachers twice as likely to teach in poor D.C. neighborhoods
“Students in the region’s poorest neighborhoods are nearly twice as likely to have a new or second-year teacher as those in the wealthiest, a Washington Post analysis has found. The pattern means some of the neediest students attend schools that double as teacher training grounds.” University of Virginia economist James Wyckoff described this trend as…
Read MorePaper questions state’s charter school reporting methods
The Michigan Department of Education’s annual report shows charter schools perform better than other districts, but the department might be changing the method it uses to gauge charter school performance. An article written by Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki and Kristi Tanner states, “… a Free Press analysis shows that almost three out of five charter schools score…
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