Tagged: Education Reform

School suspensions are a big issue in California. Last year, schools handed out 700,000 of them. But the Los Angeles Unified School District took a step to change that this week when it voted to ban suspension of students deemed "willfully defiant."

The Louisiana Supreme Court handed Gov. Bobby Jindal a loss today: It agreed with a lower court that his method of funding private school tuition through vouchers was unconstitutional.

For the past year, explains the AP, Jindal's administration has used "money earmarked for public schools in the state's Minimum Foundation Program to pay for private school tuition."

In a 6-1 vote, the court decided the funding mechanism was unconstitutional.

Thirty years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan's administration released "A Nation at Risk," a report warning of "a rising tide of mediocrity" in American public education.

According to the report, only one-third of 17-year-olds in 1983 could solve a math problem requiring two steps or more, and 4 out of 10 teenagers couldn't draw inferences from written material. In an address to the nation, Reagan warned that "about 13 percent of 17-year-olds are functional illiterates and, among minority youth, the rate is closer to 40 percent."