Even when failing a test—with a score of 55%—still meant passing, 44% of New York City high school students still managed to flunk the Global History Regents exam last year. The statewide exams, first issued in 1865, are administered to gauge student achievement and college preparedness. This year the passing bar has been raised higher, from 55% to 65% and educators fear that the higher test-score expectations could result in lower graduation rates. more ›

Remember the uproar when people found out about a list of words and phrases that the Department of Education no longer found acceptable for city-issued tests? The DOE would like you to forget about all that. The Department quietly announced yesterday that the taboo test topics—which included words like "cancer," "divorce," "politics" and "war"—have been scrapped. more ›

Two custodians at a northern New Jersey elementary school have been suspended for allegedly binding and gagging four young boys in a school bathroom last week and then taking pictures of them. But don't be alarmed—according to the Long Branch Schools Superintendent, the workers were just "horsing around." more ›

The parents of a 5-year-old girl are outraged over their daughter's homework assignment, which included spelling exercises for the words as "GUN" and "ROB." NY1 reports that the Flushing family is "demanding answers" after seeing their daughter's lesson when she came home from school today. "She showed me her homework, I look at it and I see the word gun on it. The first thing I thought was oh no no no, I don't want you reading it, I don't want you spelling it. I don't even want you looking at the picture. Trying to keep her away from from violence and she is being drawn to it in her homework, and that's not something I want her to learn," Lawrence Gillman told NY1. more ›

The days of lugging a 40-pound backpack to and from school are almost over, or so Apple would have us believe. At an invite-only event at the Guggenheim this morning, Apple introduced the newest version of its iBook ebook app, an ebook authoring tool, and introduced a line of math and science textbooks designed for the iPad. The textbooks are focused, for the time being, on elementary through high school students, and will supplement the existing 20,000 educational apps already made for the tablet. more ›

Long Island high school student Samantha Garvey continues to capture people's hearts with her story of academic success amid her family's hardships. In a show that airs today Ellen DeGeneres presents Garvey with a $50,000 scholarship for the college of her choice. Watch this video—and, uh, you may get something in your eye: more ›

Are you bored with your job, but enthralled by the mysteries of nature? Wish your days were filled with a few more dinosaur bones and giant squids? Well, step right up, because the Museum of Natural History has a golden opportunity for you! more ›

In spite of threats from the NY State education commissioner that he'd "withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to struggling schools" unless the districts and teachers union came to an agreement on teacher evaluations by January 1, the two parties failed to do so. Governor Cuomo said, "I am disappointed that agreements could not be reached. Students lose... because of this failure." Yes, they'll probably lose $100 million in federal money, $60 million of it meant for NYC schools. more ›

Laughing cruelly in the face of ADHD, public school officials announced this week that math and reading tests for third through eight-graders in the city will increase by about three hours, to a total of almost six hours overall. Better sharpen those pencils, suckers. more ›

When Cornell announced that it had received a remarkable, anonymous $350 million donation specifically to help it build a new engineering and technology-focused school on Roosevelt Island (effectively forcing the city to select its bid) there was a lot of speculation as to who would donate that kind of money (*cough* hizzoner *cough*). But there is no reason to speculate anymore, the donor has come forward and, honestly? He sounds like the kind of 1 percenter we could use more of. more ›

And the winner of New York City's high-tech campus sweepstakes appears to be... Cornell, by $350 million dollars. Mayor Bloomberg is expected to announce the news later today at the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and the Ithaca-based Ivy is apparently so eager to get started they want to have their first classes going by next September—a year earlier than the Bloomberg administration initially asked for! more ›

After CBS 2 noticed an interesting quote Michael Bloomberg gave regarding education this week (in a hypothetical world, if he could—and he can't—he "would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them, and you would weed out all the bad ones") the Mayor's office has been working hard to clarify just what he meant. Luckily, today at the announcement of a new Facebook office, Hizzoner got the chance and turned the tables, blaming the media, Capital reports. "Nothing I've said in Boston I haven't said for the last ten years," Bloomberg said. "I don't know why you have't paid attention." more ›

[Update below] Mayor Bloomberg was apparently full of interesting things to say while talking at MIT this week. Not only did he refer to the NYPD as "my own army" but he also apparently expressed a very, shall we say, interesting view on how he would fix the city's schools in a perfect world: "if I had the ability, which nobody does really, to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them, and you would weed out all the bad ones." more ›

Everything old is new again: Today, the NY Times shares the hot new educational trend at NYC private and charter schools—wooden blocks. According to the Times, adults have been flooding to "oversubscribed" block building workshops to learn how to use the simple objects: "Jean Schreiber, a self-described 'block consultant,' advised the group to engage their children in building by photographing their work. 'Don’t rush to help them with structural challenges,' she said. 'You don’t have to ask them a million questions. Just sit with them and notice.'" Next trend: Crayons and construction paper help kids with drawing, writing! more ›

Cooper Union, the school that asks questions like "A clock or device which redefines the concept of time" on its application and has been entirely tuition-free since 1902, may be forced to start charging students to combat the harsh economy. more ›

Even if you're not an evangelical Christian fundamentalist, you're probably familiar with the 58 Commandments. Standard stuff: Thou Shalt Not Kill, Thou Shalt Not Drink Alcohol in Public, Thou Shalt Not Support Homosexuality, etc. etc. It's not enough for employees at Georgia's Shorter University to place their faith in these tenets, so the school wants them to put it in writing, requiring them to sign a "Personal Lifestyle Statement" that forces them to pledge loyalty to the school, refrain from having a glass of wine at Applebees and "reject…premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality," or be fired. Because nothing strengthens the sacred bond between one's God and one's soul like a legally binding document. more ›

College admissions officers at some of the country's most elite schools are sick and tired of slogging through long-winded personal essays from applicants, so they're capping them at 500 words. Because, really, no one wants to read four pages about your meaningful time volunteering with the crippled ferrets at the animal shelter in BuFu, Ohio. more ›

The SAT cheating ring that a Long Island high school graduate allegedly orchestrated, which involved him posing as various high school students by using fake IDs, has now made the College Board take notice. At a hearing today, Newsday reports the testing service promised to make "a sweeping review of the system that safeguards testing of students, along with new security measures that could include taking digital photos of all test takers." more ›

Today, the NY Times looks at an issue crippling the city: The ruinous amount of homework assigned by private schools like Dalton, Trinity and Horace Mann, "Armed with neuroscience, self-analysis and common sense, some of New York City’s most competitive high schools, famed for their Marine-like mentality when it comes to homework, have begun to lighten the load for fear of crushing their teenage charges." more ›

Because firing people on a Friday leaves less chance for an "incident," 672 city school employees were let go yesterday in the single largest layoff since Mayor Bloomberg took office. All were school aides, parent coordinators, or family workers that acted as liaisons between teachers and the families of students, and were fired due to tightened budgets. According to the Times, the workers "are among the city's lowest paid," with school aides making $14 an hour and parent coordinators working for a $35,000 salary, or what it costs to wallpaper one of the mayor's dining rooms. more ›

In the US today there are nearly 5.4 million vending machines and almost seven percent of them are located in elementary, middle and high schools. Scary, but even scarier is the fact that until recently most of those machines were not even close to healthy. Not that it really matters? Though school districts across the country are trying to bring healthy vending machines to their hallways, they are finding the same thing that fast food companies have found: People don't go to vending machines for healthy food. more ›

Are people just not interested in taking the GRE? Or is money the major factor? more ›

Private schools have long offered admissions to the young siblings of students—but the NY Times reports that's no longer the case at some schools, for reasons including increasing diversity and making more money. To illustrate the story, the Times offers a glimpse at one elite private school's insane kindergarten admissions process: more ›

Move over, Schoolhouse Rock. Today the NY Times has an interesting piece today on how using rap to teach Regents History classes to New York's high schoolers has led to significant leaps in performance. Fresh Prep, a program run by the Urban Arts Partnership, is putting their instructors in the classrooms of seven high-poverty high schools in hopes that students will help them fill in the blanks in their otherwise prodigious flow. "The way land is shaped is topography / Mountains isolate, a harbor is by the sea / Geography affects the economy / Along with the climate environmentally," goes one song. Hey, maybe we don't blame them for deliberately skipping words. more ›

Reactions are pouring in from both sides about the city's new sex ed mandate, which requires all public middle and high schoolers to learn how to do things like put on a condom. The Pope, unsurprisingly, is none too pleased, though parents seem happy that their kids aren't learning from Facebook. more ›

Students across the city will soon be giggling over condom application demonstrations in the classroom, now that the city is requiring public middle and high schoolers to take sex-ed classes covering more aspects of the birds and the bees. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg kept saying that he wanted to make it harder for teachers to get tenure without good test scores, and he wasn't kidding. This year just 58 percent of the teachers up for the coveted job security provided by tenure got it. Last year 89 percent of those eligible got tenure. At the same time, however, fewer teachers were outright rejected for tenure than last year with only 2.9 percent getting a no compared to 3.3 percent last year. The rest of the teachers have at least another year to shape up or ship out. more ›