Education
Extra Extra Monday: Overdoses, background checks, housing markets, midwifery and fraudulent accounting
Use only as directed | ProPublica and This American Life “About 150 Americans a year die by accidentally taking too much acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. The toll does not have to be so high.” Read the stories from ProPublica. Company Behind Snowden Vetting Did Check on D.C. Shooter | Bloomberg “The U.S. government…
Read MoreScoring errors jeopardize tests: Poor oversight raises risk
“It can mean the difference between college and a factory job; between scraping by and a chance for more. The former principal is still haunted by the few times he told parents their children wouldn’t receive a high school diploma because they had failed the exams.”
Read MoreDeVry Lures Medical School Rejects as Taxpayers Fund Debt
“DeVry, which has two for-profit medical schools in the Caribbean, is accepting hundreds of students who were rejected by U.S. medical colleges. These students amass more debt than their U.S. counterparts — a median of $253,072 in June 2012 at AUC versus $170,000 for 2012 graduates of U.S. medical schools.”
Read MoreAlternative vaccine schedules mean fewer students fully immunized
inewsource in San Diego today reports that “a trend toward giving children fewer shots at one time, combined with continued skepticism about vaccines’ safety, means more kindergarteners than ever in San Diego County were not fully immunized when they started school last year.” inewsource analyzed data from the California Department of Public Health and found…
Read MorePhiladelphia Schools face downsizing, closures
Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission (SRC), voted on a controversial budget last May that eliminated counselors, sports, secretaries, librarians, music and art teachers and support safety staff at public schools in the area. Their plan: Save the beleagured School District of Philadelphia by tearing it down. The district faced a budget hole roughly the size of $300 million…
Read MoreErrors plague school testing
AJC reporter Heather Vogell exposed cracks in a cornerstone of No Child Left Behind: flawed exams. Questions with no right answers; scoring errors; test booklets with missing pages can cost students dearly.
Read MoreOff-campus houses a long-standing problem for Naval Academy
“Last week’s hearing on sexual assault allegations against three U.S. Naval Academy football players highlighted a little-known problem at the school: off-campus rental houses that violate academy regulations but have been the scene of alcohol-and sex-fueled parties for years. The Sun found that the houses, nestled in quiet suburban neighborhoods, have been the focus of…
Read MoreFor-profit colleges soaking up tax dollars despite student loan defaults, low graduation rates — and could be in trouble
“Despite their high prices and promises of good jobs, more than a dozen of the Bay Area’s most expensive trade schools graduate fewer than half of their students, report alarming rates of students defaulting on their loans — or both.”
Read MorePoway schools rely on Mello-Roos tax machine — for lunches, signs and old school repair
“There is no legal limit and no standardized formula for calculating Mello-Roos taxes. In some cases, the formulas are so convoluted that homeowners have virtually no way of knowing whether they’re paying the correct amount. What’s more there is no state oversight over the funds: at a minimum, the system is far from transparent to…
Read MoreEven Odds
“Being male and black in Oakland means being about as likely to be killed as to graduate from high school ready for college,” a San Francisco Chronicle investigation found.
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