| Why Jailing Cheating Teachers Probably Won’t Help America’s Kids Posted: 16 Apr 2015 02:54 PM PDT  "The justice being served is unequal," said Allie McCullen, Rise Up's education justice organizer. Although "we recognize that cheating is wrong, the justice being served is unequal," said McCullen, noting that Rise Up's petition drive has collected more than 35,000 signatures. Most of the cheating took place at 44 schools and involved nearly 180 educators between 2005 and 2009. In 2013, a grand jury indicted 35 Atlanta Public Schools educators after an investigation revealed cheating was behind a remarkable spike in statewide aptitude scores at previously failing schools in the city.
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| E-cigarette use triples in US teens Posted: 16 Apr 2015 02:54 PM PDT  Some two million US high school students tried e-cigarettes last year, a rate that tripled in just one year, US health authorities said Thursday. The 2014 survey by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 13.4 percent of high school students said they had smoked an e-cigarette in the past month, up from 4.5 percent from 2013. In middle school, some 3.9 percent of kids (about 450,000 students) said they had tried vaping in the past month according to the 2014 findings, up from 1.1 percent in 2013.
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| E-cig use soared, cigarette use fell among U.S. youth in 2014: CDC Posted: 16 Apr 2015 12:04 PM PDT  By Toni Clarke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Electronic cigarette use among U.S. middle and high school students tripled in 2014 while cigarette use fell to record lows, according to provocative new data that is likely to intensify debate over whether e-cigarettes are a boon or bane to public health. Overall, tobacco use among high school students grew to 24.6 percent from 22.9 percent. "Nicotine exposure at a young age may cause lasting harm to brain development, promote addiction, and lead to sustained tobacco use," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a statement. Mitch Zeller, director of the Food and Drug Administration's tobacco division, said the data "forces us to confront the reality that the progress we have made in reducing youth cigarette smoking rates is being threatened." But e-cigarette proponents argue that the CDC data could equally suggest that smoking rates fell because young people took up e-cigarettes instead of traditional cigarettes.
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| Thousands of teachers in Iran demand higher wages Posted: 16 Apr 2015 08:56 AM PDT TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's semi-official ILNA news agency says thousands of teachers have staged nationwide protests demanding higher wages. |
