Yahoo! News: Education News

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• Atlanta educators face trial in widespread cheating scandal
• Kansas teachers' union challenges anti-tenure law
• New Mexico faces teacher shortage two days before school begins
• Testing High School Athletes for Doping Uncommon

Atlanta educators face trial in widespread cheating scandal Posted: 11 Aug 2014 01:41 PM PDT By David Beasley ATLANTA (Reuters) - The trial of a dozen former Atlanta educators charged in one of the nation's largest school test-cheating scandals began on Monday, a case receiving wide attention as similar cheating accusations blemish schools across the United States. Lawyers say it could take several months to try the group of former teachers, principals and administrators, accused of conspiring to alter students' standardized test scores after a state investigation uncovered cheating at 44 Atlanta public schools in 2009. The high-profile Atlanta case is one in a string of cheating cases affecting 39 states over the last five years, said Bob Schaeffer, education director at the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, which seeks to end the misuse of standardized tests. "I think the nation closely follows the Atlanta investigation and trial to determine the scope of the problem," said Schaeffer.

Kansas teachers' union challenges anti-tenure law Posted: 11 Aug 2014 09:43 AM PDT The largest teachers' union in Kansas filed a lawsuit Monday against a new state law that ended guaranteed tenure for public school teachers, arguing that legislators violated the state constitution by ...

New Mexico faces teacher shortage two days before school begins Posted: 11 Aug 2014 09:39 AM PDT By Joseph Kolb ALBUQUERQUE N.M. (Reuters) - Just two days before classes resume, New Mexico's biggest school district faces a shortage of almost 200 teachers, officials say, with the majority of the unfilled positions in special education and elementary grades. With some 87,000 students due to return to Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) on Wednesday, the district is still looking for 392 staff, including 198 teachers. APS spokeswoman Johanna King said the shortages represented just a small fraction of the district's total teacher roster of around 6,300. APS will likely need short- and long-term substitutes, and it would also ask teachers to sacrifice some of their preparatory time in order to take on more classes and to have bigger class sizes.

Testing High School Athletes for Doping Uncommon Posted: 11 Aug 2014 05:00 AM PDT One of the largest school districts in the U.S. is making a bold move to combat doping in high school sports. Florida's Miami-Dade County Public Schools announced last week a pilot program to test student-athletes for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. The district is the fourth largest in the U.S., serving more than 340,000 students, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. "We are very concerned about the use of these illegal drugs," says Marcos Moran, assistant superintendent of school operations in the district.

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