Below The Beltway

Apparently, the new rule in Fairfax County is that students should show no affection at all:
Fairfax County middle school student Hal Beaulieu hopped up from his lunch table one day a few months ago, sat next to his girlfriend and slipped his arm around her shoulder. That landed him a trip to the school office.
Among [...]

A prominent opponent of teaching evolution in public schools is set to become the President-elect of the National Association of School Boards:
The National Association of State Boards of Education will elect officers in July, and for one office, president-elect, there is only one candidate: a member of the Kansas school board who supported its efforts [...]

Yesterday’s bomb threats against two three Prince William County High Schools have resulted in the arrest of seven teenagers:
Seven teenagers were arrested in connection with three bomb threats in Prince William County and Manassas high schools yesterday, heightening fears on a day when school violence was already on the minds of many.
The threats, which caused [...]

While teachers in Prince William County complain about the low salaries they’ll be getting in the new school budget, others are beginning to question the fact that the budget incudes $ 37 million for a new administrative building:
As Prince William School Superintendent Steven L. Walts pitches his proposed $755 million budget for next year, one [...]

Teachers in Prince William County are protesting a new school budget that would leave them among the lowest paid teachers in the region:
Prince William County teachers are fighting a salary proposal for the next school year that would leave them the lowest-paid instructors among major school systems in Northern Virginia.
The controversy began this month after [...]

Well, this is somewhat depressing:
In a recent survey of college students on U.S. civic literacy, more than 81 percent knew that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was expressing hope for “racial justice and brotherhood” in his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
That’s the good news.
Most of the rest surveyed thought King was advocating the [...]

No, I’m not making it up:
ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) — A school bus driver let Rachel Armstrong’s three children board the bus Monday morning, but he warned them that he wouldn’t give them a ride home that afternoon, nor could they ever ride his route again.
The problem: Armstrong’s 10-year-old twin girls and 8-year-old son speak [...]

George Will writes about a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court this morning that will hopefully put another nail in the coffin of affirmative action:
SEATTLE — This city’s school district decided in 2000 that because the son of Jill Kurfirst and the daughter of Winnie Bachwitz are white, they should be assigned [...]

Margaret Spelling goes on Celebrity Jeopardy and loses. This can hardly give one confidence about the state of the people running America’s education system.
WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says she studied hard to prepare for Tuesday night’s airing of “Celebrity Jeopardy!”
“I didn’t want to be the education secretary who didn’t know how to spell [...]

That could be the subtitle of this Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post by American University graduate student Sui Lang Panoke, who argues in favor of expanded federal student aid to graduate education
Is access to graduate education in America exclusively for the upper class?
As a first-year graduate student struggling to make ends meet, I believe [...]