Education Guide

The Palm Beach County School Board is expected to vote on a new policy change Wednesday that will beef up a school’s authority to question parents who try to present fake documents to get their children into different schools.

At that same meeting, the board is also expected to take a final vote on when physical restraints can be used to subdue special needs children who are acting out dangerously.

The changes to the student residence enrollment requirements policy are aimed at giving officials more power to question documents presented by suspected boundary jumpers, or parents who use false documents to make it look like they live in a school’s attendance boundary.

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Tags: Beach County, County, Palm Beach, Palm Beach County

This Saturday, the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action will take place in Washington D.C. The rally, which will be staged at the ellipse, starts at noon.  Around 1:30 p.m., participants will march to the White House where the demonstration will continue.

Many readers will recognize that most, if not all, of the issues that we regularly discuss in the comments of the Notebook blog are represented in the march’s guiding principles.

In an earlier post on City School Stories, I wrote about the significance of this event and how it relates to the education reform turmoil currently occurring in the School District of Philadelphia. 

Participating in this national demonstration is just one more way for public school parents, teachers, and students to express their dissatisfaction with the course of school reforms, not only in their local communities but throughout the nation as well.

Parents Across America, one of the sponsoring organizations of the march and rally, offers a wealth of relevant information on their website for anyone concerned about the current direction of school reform in our nation. P

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Tags: Action, National Call, Schools March

Just when are you too old to start med school? According to Joshua Tompkins—a 40-year-old second-year medical student at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine—never.

Tompkins wrote an article in The Chronicle Review (“Confessions of a Middle-Aged Med Student”) about how “getting into medical school no longer requires being 23 and having a B.S. in biochemi

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Tags: School, School Instead

Whitney Tilson, ed reform’s most aggressively outspoken acolyte, is cranky with those who think reformers “don’t acknowledge the importance of factors outside of a school’s control like poverty.”  And he’s none too happy with the idea that reformers “demonize teachers.”  In his latest ed reform email blast, he throws down the gauntlet:

“I challenge anyone to show me even one quote from one leading reformer who says that reforming the schools is all that is needed or who believes that great teachers and improved teaching methods are all that’s required to improve student performance.”

Excuse, me Mr. Tilson, I think you dropped your glove.  Let me get that for you.  It took me all of 30 minutes of Googling to come up with these memorable bon mots:

1.  By our estimates from Texas schools, having an above average teacher for five years running can completely close the average gap between low-income students and others. Steve Rivkin, Rick Hanushe

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Two of my AJC colleagues are looking for folks to interview for two news stories:

AJC reporter Jaime Sarrio is looking for metro teachers who have earned pay-for-performance bonuses or participated in other initiatives to comment on how the focus on test scores changes the climate of a school. Email or call her at 404-526-7219.

AJC reporter Craig Schneider is writing a story in which he wants to talk to Atlanta school students and parents about the school cheating scandal. Are you willing to talk to Craig about the cheating scandal?  Email or call him at 404-526-5463.

Tags: Ajc, Cheating Ajc