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WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders and a former Bush Cabinet member said Tuesday that schools should stop excluding large numbers of minority students' test scores when they report progress under the No Child Left Behind law. The Associated Press reported Monday that schools have gotten federal permission to deliberately not count the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report academic progress by race as required by the law. The scores excluded were overwhelmingly from minorities, the AP found. Some leaders said Congress may need to intervene. The Education Department and others owe the public an explanation, said the...

Test Scores in County Lag Behind State's Poorer Areas Black students in Fairfax County are consistently scoring lower on state standardized tests than African American children in Richmond, Norfolk and other comparatively poor Virginia districts, surprising Fairfax educators and forcing one of the nation's wealthiest school systems to acknowledge shortcomings that have been masked by its overall success. Even within Fairfax schools, black elementary school students are outperformed on reading and math tests by whites and some other students, including Hispanics, poor children and immigrants learning English. The statewide disparity occurs among all age groups except the middle-school grades, but...

Educators who oppose standardized testing and vouchers claim to have the best interests of students at heart but it is a claim worth examining. “The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has promoted high-stakes testing for school accountability,” Monty Neill of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing writes. “Its claim was that without ‘accountability,’ the public will abandon public education, and that the use of standards and tests would lead to educational improvement.” “This was never a good argument, though it appeared to address the justifiable anger directed by racial minorities and low-income communities against second-class educational opportunities.” Fair...

Resumption of tests absurd I shake my head in stunned disbelief that the U.S. is so determined to test every limit of absurdity and insanity with the resumption of above-ground testing at the Nevada Test Site on June 2. Is there nothing that the U.S. military considers grotesque any more? Is humanity so numbed by the incessant spread of death and destruction that nothing is considered outrageous any more? Surely, if the United States is so morally and spiritually bankrupt, then we have nothing to care for or to value or to hold dear. We are so far into...

Principal Joseph Carruth was riding down the slow, paneled elevator at Camden's district office, ready to cave in to pressure from a superior who he says had just given him a tutorial on how to cheat on state tests. "My head is spinning," Carruth recounted to The Inquirer of his feelings that day in January 2005. "I can't believe it." Still green on the job at Camden's Dr. Charles E. Brimm Medical Arts High, Carruth needed medical benefits for his ill daughter. He did not have tenure. He was tempted to take whatever steps necessary to keep his job. "I...

TALLAHASSEE · Critics of Florida's high-stakes FCAT exam are lashing out at the state for hiring thousands of $10-an-hour temporary workers to score tests that are so critical in determining school grades and student promotions.

FORT GORDON, Ga. (Army News Service, Feb. 21, 2006) -- Engineers conducting show-and-tell with a 20-ton robot on the last day of two weeks of trials on Fort Gordon were cautiously optimistic. Karl Murphy, a software engineer from Robotic Research, said there was a new principle of “Murphy’s Law” at work on the test field Feb. 10. "One of my professors reminded us that we have 'sight-ons' present whenever an experiment is being viewed,” Murphy said. “The more 'sight-ons' you have, the greater is the potential for something to go wrong." Tongue in cheek, he continued explaining that sight-on fields...

A higher education commission named by the Bush administration is examining whether standardized testing should be expanded into universities and colleges to prove that students are learning and to allow easier comparisons on quality. Charles Miller, a business executive who is the commission's chairman, wrote in a memorandum recently to the 18 other members that he saw a developing consensus over the need for more accountability in higher education. "What is clearly lacking is a nationwide system for comparative performance purposes, using standard formats," Mr. Miller wrote, adding that student learning was a main component that should be measured. Mr....

Tehran plans a nuclear weapons test before March 20, 2006 – the Iranian New Year, moves Shahab-3 missiles within striking range of Israel. Reporting this, the dissident Foundation for Democracy in Iran, a US-based watch group, cites sources in the US and Iran. The FDI adds from Iran: on June 16, the high command of the Revolutionary Guards Air Force ordered Shahab-3 missile units to move mobile launchers every 24 hours instead of weekly. This is in view of a potential pre-emptive strike by the US or Israel. Advance Shahab-3 units have been positioned in Kermanshah and Hamad within striking...

After a dismal performance on state standardized tests this spring, the Baltimore school system decided to overhaul the way it teaches reading and writing in middle schools. Putting convention aside, officials spent at least $2 million on Studio Course, a curriculum that uses teen magazines, places grammar on the back burner and lets kids write about whatever they want. ... The program has a track record in only one other city, Denver, where middle schools have seen reading and writing scores stagnate. "I can't imagine Baltimore would be so ignorant to think it's research-based," said Kay Landon, a sixth-grade teacher...

An Interview with Christina Asquith: About “The Emergency Teacher” Tuesday, November 8, 2005 EducationNews.org Suzi Cottrell Michael F. Shaughnessy Eastern New Mexico University Portales, New Mexico 1) You have recently written a book about “The Emergency Teachers” What prompted you to write this book? Literature is a powerful teaching tool. When I started my first year teaching in a low-income, urban school, I searched for books by other new teachers to use as a model for myself. But I couldn’t find anything that was realistic and written by a teacher. So, when my year ended, and I had learned so...

3 employees of Creekstone Farms in Arkansas City were airlifted to a Wichita hospital Sunday afternoon after an elevator accident. Arkansas City Fire officials say the 2 men and 1 woman were seriously hurt when a freight elevator suddenly fell about 30 feet. They say Creekstone officials told them the elevator was not intended for human use. Creekstone Farms is declining comment on the incident until Monday.

WASHINGTON -- Rafael Palmeiro gave his first public explanation of his failed drug test Wednesday, on the eve of a congressional report on whether the former Baltimore Orioles slugger lied under oath when he denied using steroids. In a statement released by his lawyer, Palmeiro acknowledged several facts of his case that already had been reported, including that the anabolic steroid stanozolol was found in his system in May, and that he had raised the possibility that a shot of vitamin B12 he took in April "might have been the cause." "I have never intentionally taken steroids," Palmeiro said in...

Vermont may sue to stop tire burn November 6, 2005 By Darren M Allen Staff Writer MONTPELIER — If New York environmental officials choose to disregard Vermont's opposition to plans by International Paper Co. to burn up to 72 tons of shredded tires at its Ticonderoga, N.Y., paper mill for a two-week test, Vermont will likely take the matter to court. Gov. James Douglas and his administration, in cooperation with the Vermont Attorney General's Office, are prepared to exercise every legal avenue at their disposal, the governor's press secretary said last week. "Gov. Douglas has asked the Agency of Administration...

11/4/2005 - EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFPN) -- The Air Force’s second CV-22 Osprey arrived here Oct. 27. -- two months earlier than the contract’s due date. The first Air Force CV-22 was delivered for electromagnetic testing to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., Sept. 16 and will arrive at Edwards in December. The third CV-22 will be delivered in February 2006. The Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center will use these three aircraft to conduct an operational utility evaluation next summer. If the CV-22 completes the evaluation successfully it will be certified for use in training operations...

Has anyone had any experience with Huntington Learning Center? I have a child who has been struggling in school for some time and our efforts have not improved the situation much. My wife suggested we take him to a learning center and we went to Huntington Learning Center, where, after a long discussion with the woman who owned it, we made an appointment to have him tested. The results of the test confirmed what we already knew ($170.00 for the test) and we were then subjected to a 2 hour conference where we were informed that my child's only hope...

Nearly 100,000 California 12th graders — or about 20% of this year's senior class — have failed the state's graduation exam, potentially jeopardizing their chances of earning diplomas, according to the most definitive report on the mandatory test, released Friday. Students in the class of 2006, the first group to face the graduation requirement, must pass both the English and math sections of the test by June.

Schools often conceal high dropout rates for minority students. Among the "talented tenth," those in the top 10 percent of test takers, reading scores have dropped four points since 1971 and math scores have not budged since first measured in 1978. So say the latest (2004) results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the nation's report card. At the other end of the scale, dropout rates have actually increased since 1990, rising to 30 percent of all 17-year-olds.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 - F.B.I. scientists said Thursday that they would abandon a controversial bullet-matching technique that had been used in thousands of investigations. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it still had confidence in the scientific reliability of the technique, which is known as bullet lead analysis and analyzes the chemical composition of a bullet. But in light of criticism of how the results were interpreted in court, the bureau said it would stop conducting the tests. A number of defendants who were convicted with the help of the bullet-testing technique have challenged the evidence because of questions about...

The high school class of 2005 earned the highest-ever marks on the math portion of the SAT, a modest change that continues the steady 25-year trend of improvement on the country's most popular standardized college entrance exam. Significant gaps between racial groups remain, however, and officials said they are troubled by the comparative lack of progress in scores on the test's verbal section. Last year's seniors averaged 520 out of a possible 800 on the math portion, 2 points higher than the class of 2004. Average scores on the verbal section were unchanged at 508, according to results released Tuesday...