October 30, 1996
As he's done at hundreds of schools before, Charles "Poncho" Brown empties his visual aids onto a table--a tangle of needles, crack pipes, and inhalant canisters.
To hear some Kansans tell it, the upcoming state school board election is a referendum on a conservative agenda.
Time to go
Though Arizona schools chief Lisa Graham Keegan has said in the past that she does not want to play "family feud" with Gov. Fife Symington, it appears she is finding it hard to resist.
After six years of challenging the constitutionality of school funding in Illinois, some 70 school districts ran out of legal options this month when the state's high court dismissed their lawsuit.
In 1994, an Arkansas judge gave the state's lawmakers two years to come up with a more equitable school finance plan. But it will be the state's voters who decide next week if the new plan goes into effect.
Flagging interest
Nearly a quarter of the colleges and universities approved for third-year participation in the Department of Education's direct-lending program have declined to sign up.
Washington
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last week to review an important procedural case affecting the ability of government officials, including school administrators, to raise a defense of immunity in civil rights lawsuits.
Clinton Announces Focus on Tribal Colleges
President Clinton last week unveiled a White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities and named an accompanying advisory board.
A leading national effort to reform science education suffered a major setback last week when the National Science Foundation withdrew its financial support.
Boy Suspended 3 Times In Dispute Over Uniform
School officials in a Calumet City, Ill., district have suspended a 7th grade honors student for a third time this school year for not conforming to a new, mandatory school-uniform policy because of what his parents say are religious reasons.
The Philadelphia school board approved a program last week that will hold teachers more accountable for student performance and give cash awards to successful schools.
Teacher involvement in school management and decisionmaking does not appear to help or harm students' performance on standardized tests, a University of Virginia study has found.
A state review of the Camden, N.J., schools has found a bloated bureaucracy that is misspending at least $32 million, hiring friends and relatives of school officials, and using an unsafe administration building that it may not be legally entitled to occupy.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is sending trainers to school districts to give bus drivers tips on how to safely negotiate railroad crossings.
Voters in Los Angeles will decide next week whether to approve the largest-ever bond issue for school construction in a single district--$2.4 billion to pay for renovations at hundreds of the massive system's schools.