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HOUSTON INDEPENDENT School District Superintendent Terry Grier recently pointed out a troubling fact: About 2,800 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders were two or more years older than their classmates. 'BIG problem,' [...]

THE FEDERAL STIMULUS PACKAGE PROVIDES badly needed aid to school districts, allowing them to avoid massive staff and teacher layoffs and injecting them with a healthy dose of funds for [...]

A YEAR AGO WHEN THE CHERRY Creek School District in Colorado was considering ways to fund a GPS tracking system so dispatchers would know the location of buses, officials asked, [...]

IT'S NO SECRET THAT THE dearth of special education teachers has created huge headaches for district human resources departments, especially in suburban and rural areas. In addition to insufficient numbers [...]

PARENTS OF CHILDREN IN MOST elementary grades in Minnesota's Independent School District 191 receive an annual notice with potentially life-altering data for their children--and they are not state test scores, [...]

THE ECONOMY IS ALSO MAKING it hard for districts to borrow from banks to pay for schools and projects. In North Carolina, for example, Wake County--whose school district of over [...]

TAXPAYERS, HOMEOWNERS AND investors are not the only ones nervously wiping their brows--the Wall Street crisis also has serious implications for education. A wave of foreclosures has uprooted children, creating [...]

SOCIAL FACTORS OUTSIDE school districts' control strongly influence student achievement gaps that appear in kindergarten and persist through high school, says a new report from the Educational Testing Service. Drawn [...]

THE STATE OF ALASKA MUST improve its oversight of persistently under-performing school districts to ensure that students are getting an adequate education or it will no longer be able to [...]

AN AMERICAN AND AN ISRAELI nonprofit education group have partnered to work with U.S. school districts in an effort to ensure that children of color are not mistakenly placed in [...]

The article discusses what school districts can do to ensure students' online safety. Some schools use the curricula to teach lessons on Internet safety and security measures. It is noted that teachers may need more training to feel confident to teach Internet safety and a survey of teachers found that many felt their districts needed to do more to promote Internet safety teaching. Web 2.0 tools, it is noted, could be used to keep children safe.

The article offers information on the key principles to enhance K12 leadership at school districts in the U.S. Douglas Reeves, founder of the Leadership and Learning Center in Colorado, mentioned some simple principles that can help K12 leaders be more effective in creating and communicating objectives to staff and improving accountability. Reeves added that teachers and staff bring about change by seeing and buying into benefits of new initiatives.

The article reports on the development of advertising in school buses of school districts in the U.S. Cherry School District in Colorado set up print ads in buses to fund a tracking system that will help locate their buses but administrators are pressed to weigh the value of revenue gained against intrusion of commercial interests into school life. Cobb County School District installed music programming in buses which include music, news and safety measures that cater to the needs of students.

The article profiles Krista Parent, superintendent of the South Lane School District in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Parent was a former physical education teacher. She was named the 2007 National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators and ARAMARK Education. As superintendent, Parent implemented several innovative changes at Cottage Grove High School.

The article discusses how the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Public Schools (PPS) district is attempting to improve teacher recruiting and training with assistance from the business sector. The Empowering Effective Teachers plan, which has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to pair novice teachers with experienced teachers. Students from the University of California proposed solutions for student services at PPS as part of the Educational Leadership Case Competition.

The article discusses the Tangipahoa Parish School System in Tangipahoa, Louisiana. The author notes that the district utilized economic stimulus funds from the U.S. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to purchase desktop virtualization software from the computer firm NComputing. The virtual desktops allowed multiple students to use a single computer, reducing costs and electric power needs.

The article discusses a partnership between San Jose, California and the city's Union School District to reduce waste in landfills and promote recycling. Compostable supplies were purchased for the district's cafeterias. Educational materials on recycling were distributed and surplus supplies were auctioned off, reducing storage needs and generating revenue.

The article reports on the implication of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology on the call programs of school districts in the U.S. They used VoIP to save costs by routing calls through a data network and applied advanced functionalities for effective communication including wireless VoIP phones and videoconferencing. They installed phones in administrative offices, teacher workrooms and some classrooms to record student attendance and intend to add weather news on the VoIP telephones.

The article reports that the Indianapolis Public Schools in Indiana has streamlined the process for the tutoring services to low-income students under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. According to the article, the district's participation rate is among the highest in the United States. It adds that more than 60 percent of Indianapolis' 3,500 eligible students signed up for free tutoring in the 2006 school year.

The article reports on the removal of the Rosemont Elementary/Middle School from the takeover list of the Baltimore City Public School System, when Coppin State University (CSU) took over its management and administrative supervision. The performance of its students has also improved. CSU is confident it could help the children through group work and other extracurricular activities.

The article presents the corporate profile of School District of Indian River County in Florida. The district uses Performance Matters software system in which it gives administrators, principals and teachers to access students' state and local assessment data, grades, and disciplinary records. However, the software produces color-codes charts that school staff can track cohorts of students.

The article reports that public health officials are telling school districts to be prepared should the bird flu virus evolve to the point where it can spread easily from person to person. There have been 194 reported human cases of the H5N1 virus, which has been attributed to exposure to infected poultry. The fatality rate of more than 50 percent are alarming public health officials, which prompted them to warn school districts.