Free Republic

...Karin Miller, 43, a stay-at-home mother during the school year with a doctorate in psychology, who is redefining the role of camp counselor. She counsels parents, spending her days from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. printing out reams of e-mail messages to deliver to Bryn Mawr’s 372 female campers and leaving voice mail messages for their parents that always begin, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m just returning your call.” Jill Tipograph, a camp consultant, said most high-end sleep-away camps in the Northeast now employ full-time parent liaisons like Ms. Miller......The liaisons are emblematic of what sleep-away camp experts say is an increasing...

His dad made it big in politics, but Andrew Giuliani’s dreams veer toward a career as a professional golfer, he explained as he smacked golf balls Thursday on Randalls Island, which is one reason, he said, that he sued Duke University and its head golf coach for pushing him off the varsity team this spring... ...In the lawsuit, he acknowledged that he may have misbehaved in February when he tossed an apple in a teammate’s face, flipped his putter a few feet, threw and broke a club and gunned his engine in a parking lot......An e-mail message to Andrew Giuliani...

Savannah area Starbucks employees and customers have donated over a ton of coffee to the troops over the past two years, and the troops really appreciate it.

...Educators who supplement or replace their day jobs with online teaching for local public schools are discovering that the perks of working at home come with hurdles: grappling with awkward or confusing lines of communication with their pupils; gauging student performance without seeing facial expressions; and struggling to withstand the urge to check e-mails from students during weekends. Online courses, mostly in high schools, have proliferated in recent years despite debate about their effectiveness compared with face-to-face instruction. The number of times students enrolled in distance education courses connected with public schools (using Internet, two-way video or other technologies) rose...

....Given her history of humanitarianism, these adjectives might be associated with McCain herself. The election of her husband would also bring to the White House an adventurous, traveled, intriguingly fearless first lady. Over the years, McCain has taken medical services to a Sandinista stronghold after Nicaragua's civil war; set up a mobile hospital near Kuwait City while the oil wells still burned from the Persian Gulf War; helped in Bangladesh after a cyclone. And while in that country in 1991 she found her daughter Bridget in an orphanage -- "She really picked me," McCain insists. Sometimes the desire to save...

...Longer school days and longer school years work. Giving principals the power to hire good teachers and fire bad ones works. High expectations work. Giving a teacher freedom to hug a child who needs hugging works. Parental involvement works. Counseling for troubled students and families works. Consistency of effort works. Incentives work. Field trips that expose kids to possibilities you can't see from their broken neighborhoods, work. Indeed, the most important thing I've learned is that none of this is rocket science. We already know what works. What we lack is the will to do it. Instead, we have a...

The University of Hawaii at Manoa, Kapolei High School, isisHawaii and Ainoa, Inc. have partnered to launch UHM SEED Academy, a new public 'bricks and clicks' high school offering a blended curriculum of core, Advanced Placement, and world language courses taken online and hands-on STEM electives in science, technology, engineering and math taught on-campus at Kapolei High School. The UHM SEED Academy is a high-quality, innovative alternative to the traditional school experience and is currently enrolling students tuition-free for the 2008-09 school year, which begins August 11. The combined online and face-to-face curriculum provides students enrolled at UHM SEED Academy...

...The fundamental problem with the voucher debate is that it is always seen as an either/or proposition. For Republicans, it is the panacea to all the educational woes, and that is nonsensical. For Democrats, they say it will destroy public education, and that too is a bunch of crap. I fundamentally believe that vouchers are simply one part of the entire educational pie. There is no surefire way to educate a child. We've seen public schools do a great job (I went to them from kindergarten through college) along with private schools, home schooling, charter schools and even online initiatives....

...On the subject of elementary and secondary education, the two seem to have gotten their roles completely mixed up. Obama is the staunch defender of the existing public school monopoly, and he's allergic to anything that subverts it. John McCain, on the other hand, went before the NAACP last week to argue for something new and daring. That something is to facilitate greater parental choice in education....

Berea College, founded 150 years ago to educate freed slaves and “poor white mountaineers,” accepts only applicants from low-income families, and it charges no tuition. “You can literally come to Berea with nothing but what you can carry, and graduate debt free,” said Joseph P. Bagnoli Jr., the associate provost for enrollment management. “We call it the best education money can’t buy.” Actually, what buys that education is Berea’s $1.1 billion endowment, which puts the college among the nation’s wealthiest. But unlike most well-endowed colleges, Berea has no football team, coed dorms, hot tubs or climbing walls. Instead, it has...

....The original No Child Left Behind law recognized the importance of teacher quality but did not properly emphasize teacher performance in the classroom. The reforms in the District and elsewhere offer a lesson for national policymakers: To best serve our nation's children, Congress needs to fix No Child Left Behind rather than abandon it. Lawmakers can do this by identifying, promoting and rewarding successful teachers; by better targeting professional development; and by strengthening provisions that hold teachers accountable for the performance of their students. Congress should encourage states to develop programs that attract the best and brightest teachers to the...

...Gradually, he realized he wanted to teach children. After three years introducing middle-schoolers at Sandy Spring Friends School to social studies, he decided on his life's work: starting a school like none the Washington area has ever seen... ..."The model is inspired by the success of home-schoolers," he said. Students will set their class schedules, enabling them to learn at their pace and in their styles. Teachers will act as advisers, not taskmasters... ...Much of Shusterman's plan is inspired by John Dewey, a 20th-century educational philosopher whose devotees have called for teachers to be "guides on the side, not sages...

Americans can be good at collective sacrifice. During World War II, they were encouraged to buy war bonds and lived with rationed gas, coal, and foods. During the 1970s oil crisis, they had to slow down to 55 m.p.h. But what about now, when the country faces pricey challenges, from global warming to over-heated healthcare costs?

Per this whole is it schools or is it society debate, studies like this new one from Andrew Zau and Julian Betts (pdf) are pretty depressing. They show that it’s possible at a pretty early point in a child’s schooling experience to see what their trajectory is. The don’t blame the schools crowd would have a stronger case if, armed with this information, states and schools were seriously crafting interventions to get these kids back on track. But no. Instead, perversely, they often get the least.

...A new poll shows that 82% of Hispanics consider education as one of three most important issues facing this country. The survey also shows that, even while Hispanics trust Democrats over Republicans on education by more than a two-to-one margin, that ratio could change if Republicans heavily promote school choice while Democrats oppose it.... ...This survey found that although Hispanic voters generally consider public schools to be effective...Fifty-two percent of Hispanic voters have a favorable view of school choice, according to the poll, while only 7% had an unfavorable view. When asked about vouchers specifically, 32% expressed a favorable opinion...

Barack Obama may make it to the Rose Garden, but he’ll still be an orchid. For all his attempts to act like a sturdy American perennial, he’s a genuine hothouse flower, and everything he is and does is cultivated... ...Whether Obama was irritated that he had slipped up and exposed his daughters or was annoyed that his kids were exposing more delicious details about his finicky, abstemious tastes, we’ll never know....

Scientists have used a common cold virus to "light up" prostate cancer tumours in different parts of the body. It could make it easier for doctors to track the spread of the disease, and check the effectiveness of treatment. A University of California at Los Angeles team found the virus "infected" prostate cancer cells in mice, then made them visible to scanners.

Governor Sonny Perdue today announced the appointment of a working group tasked with investigating innovative ways to create long-term, comprehensive education reform to make Georgia more globally competitive. This working group...build off the work of the Investing in Educational Excellence (IE2) Task Force and review a provocative national report called Tough Choices or Tough Times to determine how Georgia might reform its education policies and practices to cause needed change for its educational system. ...focus specifically on several areas of education policy reform: Moving students to postsecondary-level work as soon as they demonstrate the necessary ability; Enhancing the quality of...

Better schools. Higher scores. And satisfied parents. That's the record of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. It is helping us keep our promise to leave no child behind in America. If Congress is thinking of breaking this promise, the nation deserves to know the story. Signed into law by President Bush four years ago, the program is the first to provide federally funded education vouchers to students. It awards up to $7,500 per child for tuition, transportation and fees; in 2007-08 it enabled 1,900 students from the underperforming Washington public school system -- the highest total yet -- to attend...

HOW far should a school go in disciplining an unruly student? And what responsibility do parents bear for that youngster’s behavior? These are issues that American educators and parents perpetually wrestle with, and they have been debated around Westchester recently because of two incidents that have received attention not just in coffee shop chitchat but also in the news media. In early June, a trustee of Ardsley’s school board resigned after other middle school parents expressed outrage at her 14-year-old son’s behavior. They accused him of bullying children and repeatedly threatening violence, including a massacre and bombing, and blamed the...