Education
Atlanta 911 center mistakes put lives in danger
An investigation by D.L. Bennett, Cameron McWhirter, Heather Vogell and data analysts Megan Clarke and John Perry of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found that the apathy and negligence of workers at the Fulton County 911 call center endangered the lives of emergency workers and of those seeking emergency help. The reporters, who reviewed nearly five…
Read MoreFinancial crisis impacting students, schools
A New York Times report shows that the financial crisis in the United States is having an impact on schools and students across the nation. With home foreclosures mounting, a record number of students returning for school are homeless or qualify for subsidized or free lunches. “As 50 million children return to classes across the…
Read MoreBuilding project for neighborhood school initiative fails
Dave Umhoefer and Alan J. Borsuk of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found in a three-part series “Subtraction by Addition” that Milwaukee Public Schools spent $102 million on a building spree on bigger neighborhood schools but that the building program has largely failed. Today, many of those new classrooms are empty. Declines in enrollment and falling…
Read MoreSuspect Soldiers series
“A yearlong examination by The Sacramento Bee of more than 250 applicants for military service found that the Army, Navy and Marines accepted ex-felons, people with serious drug and alcohol or mental health problems and dozens of others with significant criminal backgrounds or otherwise troubling histories.” In the series, Russ Carollo reports on how trouble…
Read MoreGeorgia schools balk at state law mandating retentions
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Heather Vogell and computer-assisted reporting specialist John Perry found that Georgia schools routinely promote students who state law says should stay back because they’re falling behind. The law, aimed at stopping so-called “social promotion,” requires schools to retain students in grades 3, 5 and 8 who can’t pass certain standardized tests.But the…
Read MoreOnline courses inflate faculty pay
Mackenzie Ryan, of the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, recently looked into state salary earnings and found a state university contract incentive that pays professors for teaching online classes. Pay for these courses, taught in addition to their normal work load, is based on a on a per-student, per-credit bases which pushes some professors to earn…
Read MoreQualifications of some D.C. special ed teachers called into question
An inspection by the U.S. Department of Education revealed that “D.C. school administrators can
Read MoreDistrict’s textbook procurement procedures plagued with problems
An investigation by David Andreatta, of the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.), examined the textbook procurement procedure of the Rochester School District and found a wide range of problems and waste. Issues range from nearly 20,000 book going undistributed eight months into the school year to $1.4 million in secondary school books being lost by…
Read MoreSchools promote students despite widespread failure
After a 10-month investigtion, The Arizona Daily Star reports that many students in Tucson-area school districts are being socially promoted and not earning the grades they deserve. “In the 2006-07 school year alone, nine in 10 students were moved to the next grade level, but data show that nearly a third of them failed basic…
Read MoreNorth Carolina selects university leaders in secret
An investigation by Corey G. Johnson of the Fayetteville Observer finds that North Carolina is the only state in the nation that selects the top leaders of all its public universities in secret. The Observer surveyed every state university system and more than 50 individual universities in the U.S. and analyzed approximately 113 responses for…
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