Yes, the test question that New York's eighth graders had to answer involving a race between a hare and a pineapple might be a little "zany" for some. And it's true that two of the questions didn't make any sense and had no definitive answer. But it's far from the "crap" that it's accused of being, and frankly, our eighth grade selves would have been thrilled to answer a reading comprehension question that didn't involve lemonade stands or the Industrial Revolution. more ›

There's a very adorable story in the NY Times about I.S. 318's chess team, which won the National High School Chess Championships. That's right, this Williamsburg middle school team beat high schoolers. And, still, the chess program is threatened by possible budget cuts! more ›

A Brooklyn middle school teacher has been arrested and charged with the rape of a 14-year-old student. Claudia Tillery, 42, allegedly engaged in a sexual relationship with the unidentified boy for two years. Tillery, who teaches at MS 35, The Stephen Decatur Middle School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, allegedly bribed the student, then a sixth-grader, with alcohol and marijuana. more ›

At what point do you start teaching kids the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East and how much detail on each side do you give? That is the question brought up today by public school parent Dana Milstein, whose 10-year-old recently came home from school with what Milstein found to be an alarming, propagandist "fact sheet" on Israel. Now she's taking her concerns to the public—and she has some points. more ›

A new study of 7th through 12th graders across the country reveals the disturbing news that nearly half of all students experience some form of sexual harassment, with negative effects manifesting themselves in physical ways. more ›

What is the point of the internet, if not to watch viral videos of teachers berating children? From a cursory glance, there are literally hundreds of these sorts of videos on Youtube, a yellow-brick road of nervous breakdowns captured in all their grainy glory. And even substitute teachers are not immune: a student at Edison Middle School in West Orange captured the sound of a substitute math teacher having such a verbal freak out on his cell phone. The sub yelled at the students, "You must have a learning disability because you don't pay attention" and "You're always doing this. You're a big pain for me and I'm getting sick of you too." more ›

After taking beatdowns that put him in the hospital, special needs student Kimquan Green wants out of Middle School 142 in the Bronx. Though two of the boys who punched and kicked the 14-year-old on June 1st have been suspended, he still doesn't want to return. His mom, Roberta Green, told the Daily News, "He's scared. He doesn't like to fight. The school is just no good. I can't send my children there." But the Department of Education has apparently been dragging its feet. more ›

After announcing it would cut free school lunches for the majority of public school students, the Department of Education revealed it would cut busing for seventh and eight graders, thanks to state budget cuts. NY1 reports, "The DOE says the state only requires that students be bused through sixth grade...a total of 70 schools and about 4,600 students will be affected," with nearly 3,000 of those students on Staten Island. One student predicted, "It's going to be mad different, probably going to be waking up early. It's not going to feel right." The kids will be eligible for free student Metrocards, which the MTA proposed to eliminate next year, so it sounds like business as usual. more ›

Now that Riverdale teens have proven they can survive two days without Facebook or text messaging, one New Jersey principal wants to push the kids even further, and is asking parents to ban texting, Facebook and something called Formspring from their homes. He sent a message to parents urging them to install parental control software to help monitor and curb new Facebook trends like "cyber-bullying," which just sounds like something out of Tron. (Screening tonight!) more ›

Five middle school and high school students are suing the Police Department over allegations that cops and school safety officers wrongfully arrested them and used excessive force. The plaintiffs in the class-action case — who range in age from 13 to 15 years old — say that "inadequately trained and poorly supervised police personnel engage in aggressive behavior toward students when no criminal activity is taking place and when there is no threat to health and safety," and often "confront and arrest students over minor disciplinary infractions such as talking back, being late for class or having a cell phone in school." more ›

At Junior High School 126 in Brooklyn, middle schoolers who want to use their library are only getting two, maybe three, hours of partial access a day! The Daily News reports that they "have severely limited access to the cozy, mural-painted reading spot this year so the three charters sharing the Greenpoint building can use the space for planning, meetings and small classes." One student whose local public library is in a dangerous area, lamented, "We have no way of researching. There's this whole library full of new books bought for our school, and we can't even use it." more ›

Just before the end of the day school bell at a Brownsville middle school yesterday, shots rang out in front of PS 189 when a woman driving by was shot in the face and nearly crashed into the school. The 24-year-old woman is in critical condition at Brookdale Hospital after being ambushed and shot six times by the shooter waiting for her outside the school around 2:30 p.m. Sparkle Jones, a woman who was near the intersection of E 96th Street and East New York Avenue to witness the shooting, told the News, "I heard shots, and the car hit the pole. The blood ran down her face." more ›

A Westchester County middle school social studies teacher and former lacrosse coach has a $500 a week crack addiction and a penchant for underage girls, prosecutors say. Gregg Cavaluzzi, who has taught at six schools (some in NYC) over the last decade but was recently dismissed from Pelham Middle School, was caught in a sting by cops posing as 15-year-old girls in online chat rooms. Thinking an undercover cop was a teen, he allegedly texted, "At a motel in Bronx partying you smoke? Can you get down here" and asked what's "one thing you like to do very dirty." Cavaluzzi was busted when he showed up in Elmsford, NY, for the rendezvous and was charged with enticing a minor for sex, which could get him up to life in prison if convicted. A previous student of Cavaluzzi tells CBS2, "[The girls] used to talk about how he was such a pervert and they all found it very disgusting. He might look at different body parts thinking the girls wouldn't notice but everybody noticed." Cavaluzzi denies the charges; his lawyer says his client suffers from depression and cocaine addiction. more ›

A middle school in Connecticut has raised eyebrows with its strict "no touching" policy prohibiting students from any type of physical contact with one another—from pushing and shoving to "hugging and horseplay." Students may face detention, suspension or even expulsion if they are caught sharing some personal space. The policy began being enforced because of several recent groin-kicking incidents, including one that put a student in the hospital. Twelve-year-old Patrick Abbazia said, "I even have a couple of teachers who've pulled me aside and said, 'Don't high five, I'll have to report you,'...I feel less safe walking through the halls than I did when people were pushing." Abbazia felt so strongly that he waged a protest against the rule by showing up at school with his arms wrapped in duct tape. His father supported him saying, "He is using his freedom as an American citizen to protest. Those are the kind of people who get ahead in the world." more ›

Students at a 90% black and Hispanic middle school in Park Slope say their white teacher upbraided them with racial slurs when they disrupted a movie shown in class on Wednesday. 12-year-old Pryce-Gary Forbes tells the Daily News, "She said, 'You don't know how to act. You're acting lower class. You're acting like a whole bunch of n------.'" 14-year-old Tyasia Knight was also in the class, and says, "Our reaction was like, 'What did you just call us?'" And according to Forbes, the teacher offered him candy to keep quiet about the incident! The Department of Education is investigating, but the unidentified teacher, who's employed at the Secondary School for Journalism, denied any wrongdoing when questioned by some low-class reporter: "No, I did not use the N-word in class and that's a fact. You're taking an allegation and you're making something out of it, and that's what it is, a goddamn allegation." more ›

Who said preteens don't know how to party? Oh that's right—nobody. Well, a few Connecticut middle schoolers really stepped up to the plate and turned their school bus into a booze cruise on wheels, selling mixed drinks to the other students on board for two dollars each. The Norwalk tween trio used juice, iced tea and Gatorade as mixers, but there was no confirmation of our suspicion that Miley Cyrus thermoses were turned into shakers. School officials are playing party patrol and disciplining the students without police intervention after being tipped off by parents. They claim that none of the students on board the party bus became intoxicated. Which makes us wonder: have these kids already built up a preteen tolerance or were these drinks watered down, thus officially making the junior bartenders the greatest young entrepreneurs since the Olsen twins? more ›

Mayor Bloomberg's announcement that he would reduce the number of parking permits for civil servants by 20% has annoyed yet another group. Joining police officers, fire fighters, and other emergency workers are teachers. more ›

While the jury is still out on whether Mayor Bloomberg's improvements to the public school system have really worked, he, along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and School Chancellor Joel Klein, announced new initiatives to help middle schools improve academic performance and provide better resources for students, parents, and teachers alike - plus $5 million to fund them. The money will go to the 50 lowest-performing middle schools, so they can staff up with guidance counselors, offer mentoring programs to less experienced supervisors, and offer Regents-level classes. more ›

The police made middle schoolers cry! The NY Times has a great article about the mother lode of electronic gadgets that the cellphone police seized during a visit to Middle School 54 on the Upper West Side. While the police were probably more interested in weapons, since public schools prohibits cellphones and other electronic devices, the NYPD came up big.

The Police Department was there to carry out a random sweep for prohibited items, requiring all 900-plus students at the school to walk through metal detectors before entering. more ›

City schoolkids are woeful underperformers when it comes to taking a statewide history exam. Just over a quarter proved capable of passing an 8th grade exam that covered the U.S. Constitution, major wars the U.S. has fought in, and native cultures. The passing average for the rest of the state was 55%, which is hardly impressive, but twice as good as city kids' scores. We sympathize with the 2006 test takers, because we tried to take the test and quickly became incredibly bored around the time we reached question #7, which reduced an interesting subject to a stultifying two-tone diagram. more ›

Every once in a while, Gothamist comes across a news story that brings back fond memories. There was one pathological criminal kid in our rural upstate high school. One year we had the bad luck of being assigned a hall locker to which the criminal kid knew the lock combination. He would steal the cookies Gothamist and our lockermate would bring in with our lunches. Only the cookies --the nutritious parts of the lunch were always left untouched. Let's just say that our locker was left alone for the rest of the school year after we left a *special* batch of cookies in our locker. more ›

Femme Generation is a hard band to describe. Indie-pop-rock-synth dance music is what we would say upon listening to their song "Semper Fi Little Guy". It's more complex than even that however, with listens to their entire catalog. With harmonies, chants and noises we don't even recognize, the music never stays at the same tempo or pace. They can slow it down just as fast as they speed it up. One thing is for sure though, their live performance is an amazing one. We've heard reports from the front lines of past shows, and you better be ready to dance when they close out our Movable Hype show tomorrow night. more ›

I've just discovered that all the Brooklyn Papers, including my favorite, the Park Slope Paper, are available online as PDFs. Finally! Now I don't have to trudge all the way back into Brooklyn just to read the 78th Precinct's Police Blotter. BrooklynPapers.com. Other small circulation papers I try to read every week? The Columbia Spectator and The Stuyvesant Spectator (best article this week: Students Burnt by Bakesale Rules). Any one have any newspapers to add? [Jen, 11:00AM]: My old hometown of Basking Ridge has its news reported in The Bernardsville News...there is also a police blotter. I was sad to hear that my old middle school principal, Joan Tonarelli, was retiring. She was a former nun who ruled Willam Annin Middle School with an iron fist. more ›