Court Decision
For some parents in Tate County, Mississippi, the issue was black and white: Electing racially separate homecoming queens and courts at the district’s two high schools was plain wrong. Last fall, they complained to the federal government, and the school board recently voted to combine the courts.
Paper Chase
It’s not enough to flash an Illinois teaching license to get a job in Chicago anymore. Now, educators must sign a form allowing officials to learn how many times they took the qualification tests for that license, a new policy that’s part of the city’s current crackdown on poorly qualified teachers. The district also wants the state board to prevent teaching candidates from taking licensure tests more than three times without additional training.
After Thought
What teenagers do after 3 p.m. is as important as what they do during the school day, a study reveals. According to the report, published in the journal Rural Sociology, teens who are involved in extracurricular activities are more likely to graduate than those who spend their afternoon hours without adult supervision. Ninety percent of kids who participated in sports, bands, and the like completed school; 84 percent of kids who spent three or more hours alone after school graduated.
Slippery Slope
A high school football coach in Colorado found himself in a tough situation after it was discovered that his players were coating their jerseys with slippery cooking spray prior to games to make themselves harder to tackle. The Thompson School District and the Colorado High School Activities Association suspended Loveland High’s John Poovey after he admitted he’d provided his players with nonstick spray for years. Poovey, who ultimately may lose his job over the incident, told the Denver Post that the rules against greasing up are unclear and many teams do it.
