Yahoo! News: Education News

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• Two California teachers plead not guilty in sex with student case
• California Republicans take on teachers' union in package of education bills
• Philadelphia School District rolls out latest Action Plan
• Sweet Briar College to close: Are women's colleges still relevant?
• Pennsylvania House passes bill to tweak charter school rules
• New York public schools add two Muslim holidays to calendar
• Why NYC students will be getting Islamic holidays off this year
• Understand the Consequences of Student Loan Default
• Decide Between Online, Blended Courses
• Imam Who Said Ayaana Hirsi Ali Deserved Death Penalty Was Hired By DOJ To Teach Muslim Classes To Federal Prisoners

Two California teachers plead not guilty in sex with student case Posted: 04 Mar 2015 04:16 PM PST By Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Los Angeles-area teachers pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges they provided cocaine and alcohol to underage students on a beach camping trip where one of the instructors had sex with a 17-year-old boy, prosecutors said. Melody Suzanne Lippert, 38, and Michelle Louise Ghirelli, 30, joined about five students on camping trips at San Clemente Beach in Orange County during Thanksgiving and winter breaks last year, said Orange County Deputy District Attorney Kristin Bracic. Prosecutors say the two teachers provided the teens with alcohol, cocaine and marijuana, and that Ghirelli had sex with the 17-year-old boy. The two teachers, who are free on bail, were arrested in January in a case that gained prominence after one of their colleagues, a teacher at South Hills High School in suburban West Covina, came to their defense on social media and was suspended by his school district for appearing to blame the students involved.

California Republicans take on teachers' union in package of education bills Posted: 04 Mar 2015 03:21 PM PST By Sharon Bernstein SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California Republican lawmakers on Wednesday announced a package of bills to dramatically change the way public school teachers are hired, fired and evaluated, embracing controversial education reforms in the most populous U.S. state. The bills, which put the Assembly's Republican minority on a collision course with the state's powerful teachers union, are the first in a series of policy initiatives planned under the caucus' new leader, Assembly member Kristin Olsen of Modesto. The package would enshrine into law several reforms called for by plaintiffs in a lawsuit, Vergara v California, that last year led a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to declare unconstitutional several laws meant to protect teachers' jobs. The California Teachers Association slammed the package, saying it was a response to a court case that is still under appeal.

Philadelphia School District rolls out latest Action Plan Posted: 04 Mar 2015 01:37 PM PST Philadelphia School District Superintendent William Hite pitched his own plan today for the city's public schools and it included some of the details of Wolf's budget proposal.

Sweet Briar College to close: Are women's colleges still relevant? Posted: 04 Mar 2015 11:51 AM PST Students and alumni of Virginia's Sweet Briar College were shocked to learn Tuesday that the 114-year-old, all-women's school would close its doors at the end of August. It wasn't anything that anyone suspected," says Diana Simpson, a constitutional litigator who graduated from Sweet Briar in 2008. Students hugged and cried as they learned that their school's financial difficulties were too much to overcome. Now Sweet Briar, an all-women, private school near Lynchburg, Va., will hold its final commencement in May and end all operations at the end of the summer session.

Pennsylvania House passes bill to tweak charter school rules Posted: 04 Mar 2015 11:44 AM PST Pennsylvania's charter and cybercharter schools would obtain funding directly from the state Department of Education instead of through local districts as part of a package of changes that was passed Wednesday ...

New York public schools add two Muslim holidays to calendar Posted: 04 Mar 2015 11:20 AM PST New York public schools will add two Muslim holidays to their vacation calendars, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday, a promise he made during his election campaign. Two of the most sacred holidays in the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, will be observed. Eid al-Adha, or "Festival of Sacrifice," will be a vacation day on September 24, starting in the 2015-2016 school year. The festival of breaking the fast, Eid al-Fitr, which falls over the summer in 2016, will be designated a holiday for summer school students.

Why NYC students will be getting Islamic holidays off this year Posted: 04 Mar 2015 08:51 AM PST Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City public schools will observe two Islamic holidays, starting this year. Students will be given the day off on two Muslim holy days: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. While the mayor said the policy is being created to reflect diversity in the city, critics of the plan are quick to question whether giving students more days off from school is the best decision. According to The New York Times, there are an estimated 600,000 to 1 million Muslims living in New York City, with about 95 percent of Muslim children attending public schools.

Understand the Consequences of Student Loan Default Posted: 04 Mar 2015 07:00 AM PST Recently, the New York Federal Reserve released some alarming information on student loan defaults that indicated up to a quarter of all borrowers from the last nine years have defaulted on their loans. These numbers are much higher than the three-year cohort default rate measured and published annually by the Department of Education and show a growing trend of borrowers who are in need of information on how to use the lower payment and other options available for federal student loans. If you ask federal student loan borrowers why they defaulted on their loans, nearly all would answer that they were in financial difficulty or couldn't afford their payments. For a defaulted loan, it only gets worse.

Decide Between Online, Blended Courses Posted: 04 Mar 2015 06:00 AM PST The approach, typically called blended or hybrid learning, generally refers to an educational program delivered partly online and partly on campus. Regardless, nontraditional students can still benefit from blended learning, says Susan Gautsch, director of online learning at the University of Southern California's Sol Price School of Public Policy. "I think it certainly meets the needs of people's lives," Gautsch says, noting that many students who take blended learning classes at USC's public policy school are professionals with full-time jobs and families. "Blended learning can be a great resource for students who may have been out of school for an extended period of time," says Som Seng, director of marketing for online programs at the University of Massachusetts--Amherst, which offers a blended master's degree in health informatics and management.

Imam Who Said Ayaana Hirsi Ali Deserved Death Penalty Was Hired By DOJ To Teach Muslim Classes To Federal Prisoners Posted: 03 Mar 2015 07:38 PM PST An Egyptian-born imam who in 2007 said that Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali should receive the death penalty for her criticism of Islam is now a Department of Justice contractor hired to teach classes to Muslims who are in federal prison. According to federal spending records, Fouad ElBayly, the imam at Islamic Center of Johnstown in Pennsylvania, was contracted by the DOJ's Bureau of Prisons beginning last year to teach the classes to Muslim inmates at Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Md. It was April 2007 when ElBayly, the imam at the Islamic Center of Johnston, protested Ali's scheduled appearance at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown. ElBayly, along with Mahmood Qazi, the Islamic Center of Johnstown's founder and past president, pressed university officials to block Ali from speaking.

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