Earlier this summer, 857 desks were placed on the National Mall in Washington D.C. They represent the number of students who drop out of school every hour of every school day each year.

Now, a 6-foot-tall stack of $1.5 billion fake hundred dollar bills sits on a sidewalk near the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, representing how much money the economy would gain if the dropout rate of students were reduced by 1 percent.

Both installations are part of an initiative by the College Board to get people talking about education during the presidential campaign. Dubbed “Don’t Forget Ed,” they want to raise awareness on what their website calls a crisis in America.

“It’s my future that they’re messing with. This election is going to make a really big difference to me…If it’s not about education, then it’s not about me,” said Merone, a student featured in one of the campaign’s videos.

Don’t Forget Ed encourages Americans to get involved through social media sites, signing a petition, and talking to others about the issue. In a presidential campaign focused on tough subjects like the economy, health care, and the budget deficit, the College Board doesn’t want education to be left behind in the debate. Read the rest of this entry »

Across the country, high school juniors and seniors are preparing for college. When I was in high school years ago, I was in tons of organizations, volunteered, and took more honors and AP courses than a high schooler should take. I did everything I could to build my resume for college and kept my GPA high. The next item I had to put on my college resume was my ACT score. Let’s just say my ACT score proved that I wasn’t as brilliant as I thought.

What is the ACT? The ACT is a national college admissions exam, testing students in five subject areas of English, math, reading, science, and writing. The highest an individual can score on their ACT is 36. Scoring a 36 almost guarantees admission into any university in the nation and large amounts of scholarship money. Across the country, universities request students to send college applications with an ACT and SAT score. But, in the Midwest, it is common for potential college students to send in just an ACT score.

Kansas ACT scores for 2012 are similar to the previous year, according to The Wichita Eagle. The data released Wednesday revealed students in the class of 2012 are not ready for college. About half of all US high school students scored below the average ACT score, a 21.1. High school classes of 2012 in Kansas had an ACT score average of 21.9, compared to last year’s average score of 22. Read the rest of this entry »

If you ask a student if he or she were interested in math and science, statistics say they would more than likely give a resounding no over a yes. However, if you ask them if they are curious, they might be more apt to give a positive answer. A new site, CuriosityintheClassroom.com, capitalizes on this spirit of inquiry that children have by providing engaging learning materials for them, their parents, and their teachers.

Curiosity in the Classroom, a venture between Discovery Education and Intel Corporation, encourages students in grades 6-12 to ask questions and find ways to answer them.

Does our brain store all the memories we’ve ever had?

How many texts does an average teen send per month?

Are robots “intelligent”?

The answers may surprise you, and this website answers all of these questions and more.

This interest in scientific findings is more than just a way for kids to pass the time, it may be essential to their later success in finding employment, a career, and the good of the country as a whole. Resources on the website for teachers include troubling research about students’ perceptions of their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics skills, which are fields in which the demand is increasing, the unemployment rates are low, and the pay is great. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most prestigious high schools in the US is being sued by the Coalition of the Silence, a minority advocacy group, and the NAACP for discrimination against black and Latino children. On July 23, 2012 the two organizations filed the federal civil rights lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

“Poor Latino kids are not being identified [for gifted programs], and I worry part of that is language,” said Martina Hone, a representative of the Collation of the Silence. “African-American kids are not being identified. I’m worried that’s race.”

In their lawsuit, the NAACP and the Coalition of the Silence claim that Fairfax County – where the school is located in Alexandria, VA – “essentially operates a network of separate and unequal schools [and] for decades, these students have been grossly and disproportionately underrepresented in admission to the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.” Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing its streak for not being accountable, the Florida Department of Education recently announced that it incorrectly graded hundreds of schools across the state. In fact, 40 out of 60 school districts in the state were affected by this miscalculation of grades.

This error occurred when the FDOE omitted one part of the newly revised and very complex grading formula that is used to evaluate the schools. Since the error was discovered, the grades have been corrected, resulting in 116 schools seeing their grades increase from a B to an A, 55 seeing their grades increased from a C to a B, and 35 schools seeing their grades increase from a D to a C.

“School grades are important to students, parents, teachers, principals, administrators, and the community,” said Gerard Robinson, Commissioner of Education. “And, while I am pleased that the continuous review process has resulted in better grades, we will continue to look for ways to improve the grade calculation process.”

The school grades are based mainly on a standardized test that focuses on reading, writing, math, and science called the FCAT. The results of these grades are used for a number of purposes, including determining which schools receive financial rewards. However, many people are saying this test is too rigorous for most students and that students might feel too discouraged after taking it.

Rick Roach, an educator who took the FCAT and did not pass, made his results public.

“It seems to me something is seriously wrong here,” he said about the test. “If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.”

Roach currently has two master’s degrees and is a member of the Orange County School Board.

So, it seems that perhaps the Florida Department of Education should take a look at what it has been doing lately, concerning standardized tests and grading of schools in the state. Perhaps grades are not all they are cracked up to be.

“Moving forward, we need to focus our attention on the quality of the work produced and student achievement, not just a letter grade,” said Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie.

Via The Huffington Post

Also Read:

Students in Florida Attend Virtual Schools with No Teachers

It’s the End of No Child Left Behind: Now What?

Later Start Times in High School Would Help Student Performance

President Obama announced that he will be creating a new education initiative targeted to improving the achievement levels of African Americans in education. While in New Orleans giving a speech to the Urban League, the president stated that he would sign an order putting the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans into place.

This new educational initiative “works to make sure that all African American students can receive an education that fully prepares them for high school graduation, college completion and productive careers,” Obama said.

This initiative will be work with the Executive Office of the President and cabinet agencies to identify evidence-based practices to improve African American students’ achievement in school and coll,ege. The White House stated that this initiative will also work to “develop a national network of individuals, organizations and communities that will share and implement these practices.” The goal of this initiative will be to ensure that African American students have the same opportunities as other students. Read the rest of this entry »

A new study from Ball State University is going to have parents of high school students, and the students themselves, quite upset and worried. According to the study, 81.3 percent of 305 high school counselors reported that their schools do not have any sort of protocol or procedure for handling reports of adolescent dating violence, which is any psychological, emotional,  sexual, or physical violence that occurs within a dating relationship.

Even more upsetting is that 90 percent of the counselors who were interviewed reported that they had not been trained in how to assist victims of adolescent dating violence within the past two years. Forty-three percent of the counselors said this lack of training was the main barrier that kept them from being able to help victims of this form of abuse. However, 61 percent of the counselors said they had indeed assisted victims of adolescent dating violence in the past two years, even though they did not have any training in the issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that almost 50 percent of students who take an AP exam are not going to pass? That certainly has to be a frustrating factoid for those test takers. If only there was something they could do in order to improve their chances of passing those tests….Oh wait, there is now, thanks to McGraw-Hill Education.

McGraw-Hill Education has a new digital program, the ONboard Series, which is an “all-digital learning solution designed to improve students’ performance in AP classes and on exams by developing the skills they need to succeed before they enter the course.” This program is just one more step on McGraw-Hill’s journey to become the leader in education innovation.

According to the Jeff Livingston, senior vice president of College and Career Readiness at McGraw-Hill Education, many of the students who take AP classes do not pass the tests because they are not prepared for the rigorous coursework and expectations that come along with the classes. This then leads to them not preparing as well as they should for the exams. Livingston says that ONboard will aim “to better prepare students for their AP courses by providing them with the skills and background knowledge they need to be successful.” Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been hoping that our public schools have been doing a better job of teaching students about the ways to prevent pregnancy and spreading STDs, then I’m sorry to tell you that this does not seem to be the case.

As reported by The Huffington Post, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a study of the data from public high schools in 45 states. This was part of the organization’s biennial School Health Profiles. The organization found that between 2008 and 2010, 11 states saw decreases in the number of schools that taught this information to middle school students. There were no states that saw in increase in the teaching of these important topics. Read the rest of this entry »

I always have trouble remembering people’s names. The first day of class is always tough for me because I’m expected to learn and remember 30 new faces and names. However, if I was a member of the freshman class at Valley Southwoods Freshman High School, the situation would be a little more difficult because there are five sets of identical twins in that class. There are also 11 sets of fraternal twins, which means that there are 16 sets of twins, total.

Evidently someone who wasn’t too busy being overwhelmed by all the new names to learn thought this was a little strange and notified the Guinness World Records people. It seems that a concentration of twins this large was something worth keeping record of, and that’s exactly what the people at Guinness World Records did. After going through their records, Guinness World Records decided that this class of ninth graders in West Des Moines, Iowa had the Most Twins in the Same Academic Year at One School and crowned them record holders. Read the rest of this entry »