Education News from Washington Post

Thousands of breast cancer survivors and their supporters gathered Saturday on the Mall for the annual Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure, but attendance at the charity’s signature fundraising event was down for a second consecutive year.

Here is a list of commencement speakers at selected colleges and universities in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

The District college/university date speaker American May 11 Anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer Catholic May 18 Poet and critic Dana Gioia Gallaudet May 17 Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood George Washington May 19 Actress/activist Kerry Washington Georgetown May 18 Lisa J. Shannon, founder of Run for Congo Women Howard May 11 Former president Bill Clinton Trinity Washington May 18 Community health leader Maria Gomez University of the District of Columbia May 11 UDC Interim President James E. Lyons Maryland Bowie State May 17 First lady Michelle Obama Johns Hopkins May 23 Neurosurgeon Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa St. John’s May 12 James Schamus, chief executive of Focus Features St. Mary’s May 11 Gov. Martin O’Malley U.S. Naval Academy May 24 President Obama University of Maryland at College Park May 19 Retired baseball star Cal Ripken Jr. University of Maryland Baltimore County May 23 Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor Virginia George Mason May 18 U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner Marymount May 19 NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd Mary Washington May 11 Walgreens executive Steve Pemberton University of Virginia May 19 Former U.S. senator James Webb Virginia Tech May 17 Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger Washington and Lee May 22 Religion professor Harlan R. Beckley William and Mary May 12 FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III Read full article >>    

After years of pay freezes and unpaid furloughs, physical education teacher Steven Lightman received a roughly $8,000 annual salary bump this school year.

But it wasn’t because Lightman’s school system decided to give the veteran teacher a raise. He made it happen himself by switching Washington area school districts.

The following 90-second video was secretly recorded by a student at Duncanville High School in Texas as another student, Jeff Bliss, told off his world history teacher about the way she was teaching after she had kicked him out of the class.

A discussion on school reform in New York took a surprising turn this week when Paul Vallas, a pioneer of the current era of school reform, said, "We're losing the communications game because we don't have a good message to communicate."

It just so happens that in the same week that a co-author of a Heritage Foundation immigration study resigned for suggesting that Hispanics have lower IQs than whites, the Pew Research Hispanic Center released a new analysis showing that Hispanic high school graduates have passed whites in the rate of college enrollment.

Montgomery County officials have reached an out-of-court settlement with six former employees at Kemp Mill Elementary School who accused their one-time principal of misconduct and retaliation.

The settlement, which came just days before a trial was scheduled to begin Monday, puts an end to a civil lawsuit that, according to court documents, included allegations that the principal escorted unruly children into a closet-size room to calm them down and subjected staff members to unwanted touching, verbal abuse and harassment.

For a group of D.C. high school students, baseball player Jackie Robinson had been a distant historical figure they knew little about.

But as they left a screening Friday of “42,” the new film about Robinson and his sometimes painful path to integrating baseball, they were inspired by lessons that apply to their lives today.

A federal judge had several sharp and skeptical questions Friday for D.C. education activists who have sued to halt the planned closure of 15 city schools.

Opponents argue that the closures would disproportionately affect poor and minority children and therefore violate a number of civil rights laws. In a packed U.S. District courtroom Friday, they pleaded for a preliminary injunction to block the closures, citing “irreparable harm” to children if the plan put forth by Chancellor Kaya Henderson is allowed to move forward.

Hundreds of Quince Orchard High School students who took the Advanced Placement psychology exam Monday may have their tests ruled invalid after a student recorded a cellphone video at the testing center and posted it on Twitter.

The Fairfax County School Board late Thursday approved a boundary change that will move about 500 students in the fall of 2014, an effort to address crowding at two schools in Fairfax City.

The vote came 11 months after the city requested that the board consider a change to alleviate over-enrollment at Fairfax High School and the potential for over-enrollment at its feeder school, Lanier Middle. Although the schools are within city limits, and part of the Fairfax city school system, about 65 percent of their students come from surrounding county neighborhoods.

The wait-list started as a backup plan for college admissions officers who needed to fill remaining seats in a freshman class if not enough of the accepted students committed to attending by the May 1 deadline.

A New York City elementary school student who couldn't stand the way his school lunch tasted made a secret documentary that is now winning audiences and awards at film festivals.

The boy, who is called Zachary Maxwell in the film, which is called "Yuck: A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch," was in fourth grade when he embarked on his project last year. He was sick of reading the lunch menu posted online by the Department of Education, with descriptions that made the food sound delicious, only to be sorely disappointed day after day after day.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan just visited Michigan where he visited schools in Detroit and the Perry Child Development Center in Ypsilanti. Here's an open letter to Duncan, put out before the visit and written by Steve J. Norton, executive director for Michigan Parents for Schools, a nonprofit advocacy group pushing for quality local public education. The intent of the letter was to point out the conflict between Duncan-espoused education reform Duncan and the educational values underpinning Perry's High/Scope model, as well as what Norton considers the dangerous direction of education policy in Michigan.

With one decision about one elementary school, D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson is filling in the picture of the future of the District's long-troubled public school system.

It's been clear for some time that the public school system in the nation's capital has been moving toward charter dominance. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out: There are now about 45,000 students in 117 traditional public school buildings under Henderson's control, and there are about 35,000 students in 57 public charter schools beyond her control, run by the D.C. Public Charter School Board. Henderson is planning to close 15 schools this year, and more charter schools are being approved every year.

Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist, just backed out of a major international conference scheduled in Israel this June on the advice of Palestinian academics who have been pushing an academic boycott against Israel for years.

This is Teacher Appreciation Week (so declared by the National Education Association), a fine moment to say something nice to or about teachers, who have been put through the ringer in recent years.

Why has teacher morale been plummeting, as evidenced in poll after poll? You can, in large part, thank reformers who have moved to end or reduce teacher tenure, make teacher evaluation partly dependent on student standardized test scores, tell teachers what and how to teach, etc., etc.

The Massachusetts university where one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects attended is restricting the number of people who can attend this weekend's graduation ceremonies as colleges and universities around the country tighten security for commencement in reaction to the deadly April 15 attack.

Earlier this week I published a piece by UCLA Professor and author Mike Rose titled, "Leave No Unwealthy Child Behind," in which he discusses how economic inequality is reflected in educational achievement. Here's a response from Robert Bligh, former general counsel of the Nebraska Association of School Boards. Bligh's research interest involves the efficacy of the school reform efforts promoted by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since its original adoption in 1965. He served as assistant professor at Doane College and was editor and publisher of the Nebraska School Law Reporter.

The tiny Buena Vista School District in Michigan has laid off all but three staffers and is closing down now because it says it can't afford to operate for the rest of the school year. Though teachers in the three-school district in Saginaw voted to keep working for free, officials decided they are keeping the schools closed unless some way out of the crisis can be found.