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(CNN)—Nothing quite stresses out students and parents about the beginning of the school year as the return to homework, which for many households means nightly battles centered around completing after-school assignments. Now a new study may help explain some of that stress. The study, published Wednesday in The American Journal of Family Therapy, found students in the early elementary school years are getting significantly more homework than is recommended by education leaders, in some cases nearly three times as much homework as is recommended. The standard, endorsed by the National Education Association and the National Parent-Teacher Association, is the so-called...

A Brooklyn high school teacher caught canoodling with a female colleague will be back to school in the fall — and wants the city to pay her for the time she missed because of the steamy romp. Former Madison High School teacher Cindy Mauro has been out of a job a year after she was caught in a compromising position with Alini Brito in a darkened classroom at 8:50 p.m. in November 2009.

One thing about teaching that is easy for parents, policy-makers and others to forget is that working with students for hours every weekday to help them learn is very, very hard work. Even in the best of schools and even with supportive administrators, teachers have unrelenting jobs. In recent years, a growing number of teachers have found that reforms which force them to test students more than ever, collect more data than ever and attend more meetings than ever, are making the job literally impossible. That’s what happened to Scott Ervin, who has worked as a teacher, principal and discipline...

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA), originally passed in 2010 and heartily endorsed by First Lady Michelle Obama, is set to expire in September unless Congress acts to renew it. You may recall some of the details of that initiative including forcing all grains to be “whole grain rich” (whatever that means) and wiping out most of the salt in foods. Given the less then spectacular reception the program has received from schools – not to mention students – the GOP is looking at scaling back or at least modifying the rules. But The Hill was quick to characterize the...

LONDON – The British government is urging school leaders to use their “common law powers” to search student lunches and potentially confiscate any items they deem “unhealthy or inappropriate.” Education minister Lord Nash tells Express, “Schools have common law powers to search pupils, with their consent, for items. “There is nothing to prevent schools from having a policy of inspecting lunch boxes for food items that are prohibited under their school food policies. “A member of staff may confiscate, keep or destroy such items found as a result of the search if it is reasonable to do so in the...

A culture capable of self-government must be steeped in an education that recognizes the objective existence of truth, beauty, and virtue. A classical charter school offers precisely this type of education by making use of the great ideas that have informed Western Civilization for thousands of years. In order to establish and perpetuate this type of education I am seeking interested individuals in the Elkhart, Indiana area who would participate in founding a classical charter school. A few initial contacts have been made already. A meeting date has also been established. If you are interested in this, please contact me...

A Cincinnati teacher has resigned in the wake of racist comments and abusive actions taken toward handicapped children. Intervention Specialist Pamela Bullock has left her position at Wayne Local Schools in Warren County, after four teaching assistants wrote a letter to administrators detailing her abuse toward students. In one incident, the assistants reported that Ms. Bullock was taking care of a handicapped, non-verbal student, when she became irate at him. Bullock threw a marker at the boy, hitting him in the head. Later the same day, "a racial comment was directed toward the same student," wrote the assistants. "After applying...

Graduating students at New York middle school received misspelled diplomas featuring the word 'departmemt' **SNIP** The misspelled word appeared in the phrase 'New York City Department of Education' positioned at the top of the diplomas awarded to the students. The word had an extra 'm' instead of the letter 'n'. 'I'm sure next year they will be pouring over those diplomas to make sure every "i" is dotted and "t" is crossed,' Gardner told Fox 5. Another parent told the station that the Upper East Side school did not mention the mistake or issue an apology during the ceremony.

Last year one-half of one percent of Michigan's public schoolteachers were considered to be “ineffective” according to performance evaluations conducted by the nearly 900 charter and conventional school districts in the state. Those assessments appear at odds with the actual academic performance of students, and teacher evaluations have become problematic in other ways since a state law was passed in 2011 mandating more teacher accountability. Of the 95,885 teachers evaluated, just 519 earned the lowest rating of “ineffective.” Under that 2011 law, a teacher rated “ineffective” three years in a row can be fired. The law also requires teachers' performance...

They were created almost 300 years ago by Fortnum & Mason as a pocket-sized snack for aristocrats travelling by horse-drawn carriage. But now the scotch egg has been labelled a junk food and is being removed from children's lunch boxes by schoolteachers. The traditional dish – a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and coated in breadcrumbs – is seen as too unhealthy to be part of a balanced diet at Cherry Tree Primary School in Colchester. The school has taken the unusual step of asking teachers to look through pupils' lunch boxes and remove items that are deemed inappropriate....

The man, identified by police as George Cross, 40, of Lynn, was dressed in a white plastic "Star Wars" stormtrooper costume, and the gun was not real. But Lynn Police spokesman Lt. Rick Donnelly said that "the way things are today, you can't have that." The call came from the principal of the Brickett Elementary School on Lewis Street (Route 1A) at around 1:30 p.m., as classes were about to wind up for the day, said Donnelly.

One of my kids would like me to thank Michelle Obama. She wants me to keep it on the low down and not give any identifying characteristics that may get said kid in trouble so I thought I'd post here. Not that no one reads FR, but I doubt kids school board does! Because Mooch changed the school lunches to basically nothing and had the vending machines stripped to carrot strips that go bad in a day, my kids sports team started selling candy and protein bars on the black market. They raised enough to go to a very prestigious...

The American spirit has not yet been destroyed, but it cannot withstand the kind of relentless assault on its character that we are witnessing day after day. I cannot predict the form or timing of the catastrophe that will befall this country if our current direction is not changed and I don’t pretend to know what concatenation of crises, in what progression of steps and across what interval of years, will finally break the nation’s spirit. What I do know is this much: My generation, the so called “millennials” and younger, have been indoctrinated into believing that the root cause...

The American spirit has not yet been destroyed, but it cannot withstand the kind of relentless assault on its character that we are witnessing day after day. I cannot predict the form or timing of the catastrophe that will befall this country if our current direction is not changed and I don’t pretend to know what concatenation of crises, in what progression of steps and across what interval of years, will finally break the nation’s spirit. What I do know is this much: My generation, the so called “millennials” and younger, have been indoctrinated into believing that the root cause...

MADISON — Critics are blasting Wisconsin legislators after the state's budget committee passed a surprise motion last week that would allow private, home-schooled and online charter students to participate in public school district athletics and activities. The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee passed a motion early Wednesday morning that included the plan. The plan wasn't addressed in the meeting. "For that to be done in a sneaky, behind the scenes fashion and passed at 1:30 in the morning without any discussion ... that's a problem," said Larry Kaseman, executive director of the Wisconsin Parents Association. While nonpublic school students in some...

Parents of a sixth-grader at a public charter school in North Las Vegas want an apology after they say a teacher barred their daughter from using a Bible verse in an assignment. Nonprofit legal group Liberty Institute, representing Tim and Kate Frasier, sent a letter Wednesday containing their demand for the apology to the Somerset Academy's Losee campus. The Fraisers said their daughter Mackenzie was told she couldn't use the Bible verse John 3:16 for a technology class assignment called "All About Me" that involved creating a PowerPoint presentation and including an inspirational saying on a slide.

HARBOR BEACH ‒ Most elementary and middle schools fairly buzz with noise just before the school day starts, as a stampede of students put away coats, take seats and share boasts over video game exploits or exchange giggles about young romance. But one of the first things you notice at the Eccles School along rural stretch of Michigan’s Thumb is the quiet shuffle as students move from door to desk to computer station, creating a low-level hum until the Pledge of Allegiance. After which, there’s an exchange of news about soccer, a puppy and one student’s gig as bat boy...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is pushing back against a campaign criticizing First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules by showing one picture of a somewhat appetizing child’s lunch. “They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in the digital age we have ample opportunity to document and broadcast every moment, meeting and meal,” wrote Deborah Kane, the national director of the USDA Farm to School Program, in a blog post Thursday. “We have all seen those unappetizing photos of food served at school that quickly go viral,” she said. “A lonesome whole wheat bun atop a sad...

Peyton Robinson was told his US flag was offensive. York Comprehensive senior Peyton Robinson was recently told by school officials that he could no longer fly his American flag in his pickup truck. It was offensive.

Jacksonville FL---Duval County Public Schools confirmed that two female students were shot in a school bus at 118th Street and Ortega Farms Boulevard on Thursday afternoon.