Education News: September 15, 2006

Following are some of the top headlines from the world of education for the week ending September 15, 2006.

D. C. Schools Have Big Plans
(Source: The Washington Times, 09/15/06) D. C. Schools Superintendent Clifford B. Janey unveiled a 15 year plan to improve the Washington school district at a meeting on September 14th.  The ambitious plan seeks to build 23 new schools and modernize 101 old ones by 2021.  The plan begins this year, as the district expects to modernize 10 schools and build 6 new ones.  Funding should run about $250 million a year, and the entire project will be backed by $2.3 billion dollars.

Scientists: U. S. Failing to Help Obese Kids
(Source: The Seattle Times, 09/14/06) VERB, a program designed to convince teenagers and pre-teenagers that exercise is “cool,” has been lauded in the past for generating a 30% increase in exercise in young adults.  Due to federal funding cuts, the program (which is run by the Center for Disease Control) folded this year.  Health experts criticize this fact, saying that the government had already invested a great deal of money to create a working program and that shutting it down now is counter productive.

City to Open High School That Aids Sobriety
(Source: The Boston Globe, 09/13/06) The William J. Ostiguy Recovery High School will be opening in Boston in October to serve twelve students recovering from alcohol and drug addictions.  The school, named after a tireless advocate for sobriety schools in Massachusetts, is the third of its kind in the state.  Students can be admitted to the school after being sober for 30 days, and they have short sessions every morning and evening to encourage them in their struggle to stay sober.  Advocates champion these schools because they provide a venue free of peer pressure to drink and do drugs.

Harvard Ends Early Admission
(Source: The New York Times, 09/12/06) In a move that experts calculate may change the way that colleges “do business,” Harvard’s admission office has elected to drop early action starting next year.  Early action, a program that allows students to apply and get accepted before regular admissions deadlines, is a variant of the early decision program.  Harvard’s admissions staff fears that early admissions discriminates against poorer students who cannot afford to make decisions before receiving financial aid package offers from multiple universities.  While other college admissions officials have also worried about this possibility, Harvard is in a unique position of being able to implement this change without significantly affecting the applicant pool.  Harvard remains, after all—Harvard.

DISD (Dallas Independent School District) Inquiry Nets First Arrest
(Source: The Dallas Morning News, 09/08/06) Marsha A. Ollison, a secretary in the Dallas Independent School District for twenty years, has been charged with stealing money from her school district with a district-issued credit card.  Theft totals amount to $15,000 or more.  Officials investigating the case have found receipts from grocery stores totaling roughly $12,000.  Ollison’s case came to light in the wake of an investigation into abuses of district credit cards.  The credit card program has been cancelled; the 1,200 cards in circulation were terminated.  Officials expect to find more instances of abuse as the investigation progresses.