5 States Set to Increase Time Students Spend at School
December 3, 2012
Open your notebooks and sharpen your pencils. School for thousands of public school students is about to get quite a bit longer.
Five states are set to announce Monday that they will add at least 300 hours of learning time to the calendar in some schools starting in 2013. Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee will take part in the initiative, which is intended to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive on a global level.
The three-year pilot program will affect almost 20,000 students in 40 schools, with long-term hopes of expanding the program to include additional schools - especially those that serve low-income communities. Schools, working in concert with districts, parents and teachers, will decide whether to make the school day longer, add more days to the school year or both.
A mix of federal, state and district funds will cover the costs of expanded learning time, with the Ford Foundation and the National Center on Time & Learning also chipping in resources. In Massachusetts, the program builds on the state's existing expanded-learning program. In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy is hailing it as a natural outgrowth of an education reform law the state passed in May that included about $100 million in new funding, much of it to help the neediest schools.
Join FSM and stay informed. Get your daily Security Update delivered each day to your e-mail.
New York Times finds IRS office an unprepared, understaffed outpost with no direction
May 18, 2013 10:58 PM
We’re starting to expect another presidential press conference Monday morning in which Obama changes his mind about being angry about the IRS targeting conservative groups. Maybe he’ll ask acting commissioner Steven Miller to stay on and give him a bonus. And forget about abolishing the IRS — it just needs more money and attention. The […]
Racist Umbrellagate scandal overshadowed by fake Benghazi, IRS outrage
May 18, 2013 10:04 PM
Yes, it is now racist to talk about President Obama and the umbrella. In fact, let’s just add “umbrella” to the Big Book of Racial Code Words. It was bad enough when rank-and-file right wingers (like Howard Kurtz) noted the unbelievably bad optics of President Obama summoning a pair of Marines to hold umbrellas over […]
#OccupyTheFarm champions food independence, solicits donations of salad, reaps ridicule
May 18, 2013 08:23 PM
Any farmer knows that pulling weeds is just another part of a mostly thankless job, so can you blame Occupy Oakland for losing its patience when conservatives started popping up everywhere in its Twitter timeline? Who, though, could resist pointing out the irony of the people of #OccupyTheFarm asking for donations of fresh greens? Twitter […]
Sail through your next IRS application with these handy #SafeC4Names
May 18, 2013 05:39 PM
The Washington Free Beacon this week shared the story of a conservative nonprofit group that applied for tax-exempt status with the IRS only to wait nearly a year for a response. The group resubmitted its application under a more innocuous name and watched in amazement as its application sailed through the approval process in three […]
Sen. Ted Cruz leads call to abolish IRS in wake of targeting scandal
May 18, 2013 05:03 PM
When President Obama assured the nation he'd make sure nothing like the current IRS scandal would ever happen again, we're pretty sure he didn't have abolishing the IRS in mind.
FSM Archives
blog comments powered by Disqus