Yahoo! News: Education News

Civil rights attorney, federal judge Horace Ward dead at 88
Illinois governor signs higher education stopgap funding bill
New Student Loan Repayment Process May Help End Confusion
High School Teachers Tap 'House Hunters,' Tiny Houses for Ideas
Teens most drawn to e-cigarettes by online ads
The Fightin’ Administrators: The Birth of a College Bureaucracy

Civil rights attorney, federal judge Horace Ward dead at 88

Posted: 25 Apr 2016 03:18 PM PDT

ATLANTA (AP) — A civil rights lawyer who became Georgia's first black federal court judge has died.

Illinois governor signs higher education stopgap funding bill

Posted: 25 Apr 2016 09:21 AM PDT

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on Monday signed into law a bill to send $600 million to cash-starved state universities and community colleges, calling the measure "a first step toward compromise between Democrats and Republicans." An impasse between the Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature has left Illinois without a budget 10 months into fiscal 2016. In bipartisan votes in the House and Senate on Friday, lawmakers approved $600 million, or 34 percent, of the $1.7 billion Democrats had earmarked for higher education spending for the whole fiscal year, which began July 1. Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger said on Friday that her office would immediately start processing payments for the universities, colleges and for college student grants funded by the legislation.

New Student Loan Repayment Process May Help End Confusion

Posted: 25 Apr 2016 06:00 AM PDT

The Department of Education announced earlier this month its plan to create a single Web portal for federal student loan borrowers -- a move to make payments easier. Total outstanding debt is close to $1.3 trillion, and most of this debt is from federal student loans. "Our goal is to build a new state-of-the-art loan servicing system -- one that creates incentives and guidelines that support a more user-friendly single online loan management platform," said Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell in a blog post.

High School Teachers Tap 'House Hunters,' Tiny Houses for Ideas

Posted: 25 Apr 2016 05:00 AM PDT

Some high school teachers are using popular home design trends to get students interested in learning. Jessica Westervelt, a Spanish teacher at Bethlehem High School in Delmar, New York, created an activity that was inspired by the popular television show "House Hunters International" for her Spanish 3 class about four years ago. Similar to the show, students work in groups, pretending to be real estate agents, and look for three houses in Spanish-speaking countries.

Teens most drawn to e-cigarettes by online ads

Posted: 24 Apr 2016 09:16 PM PDT

To see which e-cigarette ad formats were most persuasive to teens, researchers analyzed data from a recent nationwide survey of about 22,000 middle school and high school students from grades 6 through 12, when youth are typically about 12 to 18 years old. When middle school kids said they routinely viewed e-cigarette ads online, they were almost three times more likely to use the devices than their peers who never saw ads. "E-cigarette ads use many of the same themes used to sell cigarettes and other conventional tobacco products, such as independence, rebellion and sex," said lead study author Dr. Tushar Singh of the Office on Smoking and Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.