Education News

JONESBORO, Ga. - A Georgia school district lost its accreditation Thursday, an unusual move blamed in part on what has been called a "dysfunctional" school board.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Tennessee prosecutors want to try a 15-year-old boy as an adult in last week's fatal shooting of a classmate in the middle of a crowded school cafeteria.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. holiday sales are expected to grow at the slowest rate since 2001 as consumers pull back spending in a weak economy, according to a survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Average scores on the reading, math, and writing sections of the SAT test held steady for the second consecutive year, according to a new report by the College Board on the high school class of 2008. But for critics of standardized testing, the bigger story drawn from the data is the slight decline in student participation since a longer, more expensive version of the SAT test was introduced in 2006.

FORT JACKSON, S.C. - Austin Swarner left high school to care for his mother while she fought a losing battle with cancer. Tony Brown wanted to begin supporting himself and left two classes shy of a diploma. Haelee Holden got tired of trying to make it through school while flipping burgers until 1 a.m.

SAN ANTONIO - Police have arrested three people in two separate incidents of alleged threats of violence at schools.

NEW YORK - When Diamond Emory and her daughter Makaiah arrived at Wal-Mart to buy her fifth-grade school supplies, they encountered much to entice a young shopper.

College students had yet another reason to celebrate last week when a group of more than 100 university presidents--including leaders of prestigious institutions such as Duke, Dartmouth, and Ohio State--made a dramatic proposal to lower the legal age for drinking alcohol from 21 to 18. But the proposal would have to overcome many obstacles, not least of which is the British experience, where an 18-year-old drinking age has done little to stymie an expanding binge-drinking culture.

WASHINGTON - She has shuttered 23 schools, fired more than 30 principals and given notice to hundreds of teachers and administrative workers.

The college presidents said they wanted a national debate on the 21-year-old drinking age. They got it.

CHICAGO - Charles Lane-Bey combed through racks of blue jeans at a Salvation Army thrift store and held up a pair with potential to his 8-year-old son, Edward, who swung them over his shoulder with a smile.

Harvard University is the country's oldest, wealthiest and most selective university. Now it's back on top of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, claiming sole possession of the No. 1 spot for the first time in 12 years.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US parents, politicians and educators have responded with outrage to a radical proposal by over 100 university heads that the country reduce the legal age for drinking alcohol to combat "binge-drinking."

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday in favor of a Tennessee school system that banned the Confederate battle flag because of concerns the symbol could inflame racial tensions at a high school.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A civil rights group said Wednesday it sued the state of Illinois over its system of funding public schools, accusing it of racial discrimination by relying on funding that is "inadequate and unequal."

WASHINGTON - Paddlings, swats, licks. A quarter of a million schoolchildren got them last year — and blacks, American Indians and kids with disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment, according to a study by a human rights group.

DALLAS (Reuters) - More than 200,000 children were hit as punishment in U.S. schools last year and in the South more blacks than whites are struck, two human rights groups said in a report released on Wednesday.

GREENVILLE, S.C. - A Montana woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing the identity of a missing South Carolina woman to attend an Ivy League school in what her lawyer called a bid to escape a painful past.

WASHINGTON - Federal agencies are distributing 182,000 public alert radios to schools across the country.

WASHINGTON - Hard times and higher fuel prices will follow kids back to school this fall.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Faced with soaring diesel fuel costs, school districts are forcing students to use the old-fashioned way to get to class: on their own two feet.

Statistics on U.S. schools. Numbers with an "(x)" are projections.

CONCORD, N.H. - New Hampshire securities regulators on Thursday accused banking giant UBS of defrauding the state's leading issuer of student loans.

For years, college students and their parents have relied heavily on credit cards, home equity, and private loans to pay for school, according to a recent survey provided exclusively to BusinessWeek. But those sources of cash are drying up. On Aug. 6, Wachovia joined the more than 150 financial firms that have fled the private student-loan business. And Morgan Stanley froze home-equity lines for some clients.

The slight decline in this year's average ACT scores wasn't much of a surprise to the creators of the college admissions test. That's because a record 1.42 million students--or 43 percent of all 2008 graduates--took the test, a 9 percentage point increase from last year. The pool of test takers included students from three states-Colorado, Illinois, and Michigan--that make the ACT mandatory for all graduating students, including those who are not collegebound. Out of a possible 36, the average score on this year's ACT test was 21.1, down slightly from 21.2 last year. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California may need to increase its spending on education by more than $3 billion to implement a new algebra requirement urged by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's top school official said on Tuesday.

LULA, Ga. - A suspect was shot to death and a sheriff's deputy injured after an hour-long standoff near an elementary school in north Georgia Monday, authorities said.

THE BACKDROP: Retailers are pulling out all the stops to entice shoppers into their stores during a difficult back-to-school season, as consumers cut back amid rising food and gas prices, declining home values and a shaky job market.

NEW YORK - Retailers preparing for a difficult back-to-school season are getting creative in their attempts to entice shoppers into the stores — aggressively introducing new products, slashing prices and amping up marketing in the battle for parents' bucks.