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Education

656-657
March 1885
Editor's drawer/Article


SEE ALSO: Education; Edward VII, King of Great Britain; Public opinion
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Dec 2006Monthly cost for a U.S. student to receive unlimited online tutoring from a Bangalore-based “e-tutor”: $100
Harper's Index

Source:

TutorVista (Bangalore, India)

Dec 2006Number of Texas high schools that offered Bible courses as electives last year: 25



Number of these courses that broke the law by being primarily devotional and sectarian, according to a September study: 22
Harper's Index

Source:

Mark Chancey, Southern Methodist University (Dallas)

Sep 2006Estimated number of Americans who get degrees each year from nonaccredited “diploma mills”: 100,000



Number of Pentagon employees who had such degrees on their résumés, in a recent congressional study: 257
Harper's Index

Source 1:

U.S. Government Accountability Office

Source 2:

Allen Ezell (Apollo Beach, Fla.)/George Gollin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jun 2006Factor by which total U.S. student loans from private lenders last year exceeded the amount in 1995: 10
Harper's Index

Source:

Sandy Baum, College Board (Washington)

Jun 2006

Fee for which a Florida middle-school gym teacher allowed students to skip class, before he was fired in January: $1

Years that his predecessor had operated under the same policy: 1

Harper's Index

Source:

Escambia County Sheriff's Office (Pensacola, Fla.)

Jun 2006

Ratio of negative portrayals of teachers on U.S. children's TV shows to positive portrayals: 3:1

Ratio for portrayals of adults in general: 10:1

Harper's Index

Source:

Parents Television Council (Los Angeles)

May 2006Ratio, in the United States, of the number of Wal-Mart employees to the number of high school teachers: 1:1
Harper's Index

Source:

Wal-Mart (Bentonville, Ark.)/U.S. Census Bureau

Jan 2006Minimum number of American colleges and universities that offer programs in video-game design: 82
Harper's Index

Source:

Game Developer (San Francisco)

Sep 2005Chance that a teacher in a U.S. public school is a man : 1 in 5
Harper's Index

Source:

National Education Association (Washington)

Sep 2005Average percentage of students in New York State's majority-white school districts who graduate in four years : 79
Harper's Index

Source:

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)

Aug 2005Factor by which the expulsion rate in U.S. preschools last year exceeded the rate in grades K‒12 : 3
Harper's Index

Source:

Walter Gilliam, Yale Child Study Center (New Haven, Conn.)

Jul 2005Number of U.S. public-school districts that have adopted a class in which the Bible is the primary textbook: 301
Harper's Index

Source:

National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (Greensboro, N.C.)

Feb 2005Number of copies of Helping Your Child Learn History destroyed by the Department of Education last summer: 338,500
Harper's Index

Source:

U.S. Department of Education

Sep 2004Number of prospective teachers in 19 states wrongly issued failing grades on a licensing exam since January 2003 : 4,100
Harper's Index

Source:

Educational Testing Service (Princeton, N.J.)

Sep 2004Percentage of college students majoring in the humanities who say politics are relevant to their lives : 72
Harper's Index

Source:

Panetta Institute (Seaside, Calif.)

Sep 2004Percentage recidivism rate of youth released from prison who can read at the 11th and 2nd grade level, respectively : 36, 62
Harper's Index

Source:

Dyslexia Research Foundation of Texas (Austin)

Jun 2004Chances that a sixth-grader at one Oklahoma City school was suspended for being disruptive during lunch last March 24 : 4 in 5
Harper's Index

Source:

Oklahoma City School Board

Jun 2004Chance that a British infantry recruit's reading and writing skills are no better than the average 11-year-old's : 1 in 2
Harper's Index

Source:

Sean Rayment, Sunday Telegraph (London)

May 2004Chance that an American who was home-schooled feels this way : 1 in 25
Harper's Index

Source:

National Home Education Research Institute (Salem, Oregon)

May 2004Number of suspensions a Dallas-area high school handed out last fall for dress-code violations : 1,116
Harper's Index

Source:

Duncanville Independent School District (Tex.)

Apr 2004Percentage of U.S. elementary schools that eliminated recess between 1977 and 1997 : 40
Harper's Index

Source:

The American Association for the Child's Right to Play (Hempstead, N.Y.)

Jan 2004Estimated number of times a one-year-old was bitten by his peers at a Croatian day-care center one morning last fall : 30
Harper's Index

Source:

Croatian Embassy (Washington)

Dec 2003 Percentage change in the price of a share of Edison Schools stock since February 2001: -95
Harper's Index

Source:

Edison Schools (N.Y.C.)

Nov 2003Number of Florida high school students who take physical-education courses online: 1,204
Harper's Index

Source:

Florida Virtual School (Orlando)

Oct 2003Chance on any given day that the only "vegetables" served in a U.S. public school are potatoes : 1 in 2
Harper's Index

Source:

USDA Food and Nutrition Service (Alexandria, Va.)

Oct 2003Minimum number of states where tuition at one or more public universities will be raised by at least 20 percent this year : 7
Harper's Index

Source:

National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (Washington, D.C.)

May 2003Factor by which Americans' total debt to private lenders for college tuition has increased since 1995: 4
Harper's Index

Source:

The College Board (N.Y.C.)

May 2003Number of Japanese children who refused to attend school last year, according to Japan's government: 138,722
Harper's Index

Source:

Embassy of Japan (Washington)

May 2003Fine that Britain's education minister has proposed levying on parents whose children are chronic truants: $3,900
Harper's Index

Source:

U.K. Department for Education and Skills (London)

Mar 2003Number of Philadelphia's public schools run by one of seven private-sector education management organizations: 45
Harper's Index

Source:

Philadelphia Board of Education

Jan 2003Average amount of aid each school district stands to lose if its schools do not supply the information: $762,083
Harper's Index

Source:

U.S. Department of Education

Jan 2003Page of the No Child Left Behind education law passed last year on which this new requirement is noted: 559
Harper's Index

Source:

Harper's research

Dec 2002Number of Turkish college students detained in the last year for requesting Kurdish-language classes: 1,146
Harper's Index

Source:

Human Rights Association (Istanbul)

Nov 2002Estimated number of U.S. high school graduates who will forgo college this year solely for financial reasons: 168,000
Harper's Index

Source:

Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (Washington)

Oct 2002Number of teenagers enrolled last summer in Secure Corps, a "homeland security training" camp in Pennsylvania: 92
Harper's Index

Source:

Bucks County Community College (Newtown, Pa.)

Sep 2002Ratio of military recruiters to college counselors at East Los Angeles's Roosevelt High School: 5:1
Harper's Index

Source:

Roosevelt High School (Los Angeles)

Sep 2002Percentage of students in Cleveland's six-year-old school voucher program who attend religious schools: 99
Harper's Index

Source:

Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program

Aug 2002Year in which the prom of Georgia's Taylor County public high school was first integrated: 2002
Harper's Index

Source:

Taylor County School System (Butler, Ga.)

May 2002Number of Britain's Anglican clergy to whom their union is offering martial-arts training this year: 1,500
Harper's Index

Source:

MSF (London)

Apr 2002Minimum number of Israeli high school students who wrote Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last fall to refuse in advance: 62
Harper's Index

Source:

Jewish Peace Fellowship (Nyack, N.Y.)

Dec 2001Number of mimes Guatemala's transit department hired last April to administer driver "education" at busy intersections: 20
Harper's Index

Source:

Polic'a Municipal del Tr‡nsito (Guatemala City)

Dec 2001Percentage change since 1994 in the number of boys on competitive U.S. high school cheerleading squads: +470
Harper's Index

Source:

National Federation of State High School Associations (Indianapolis)

Sep 2001Number of U.S. schools that use E-rater, a software program that reads and grades student essays: 95
Harper's Index

Source:

Educational Testing Service (Princeton, N.J.)

Sep 2001Percentage change since 1999 in the number of U.S. public schools that are run by private companies: +111
Harper's Index

Source:

Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

Sep 2001Percentage of U.S. employers who say that a high-school graduate "has at least learned the basics": 39
Harper's Index

Source:

Public Agenda (N.Y.C.)

Sep 2001Number of American states that permit public-school teachers to inflict corporal punishment on students: 23
Harper's Index

Source:

U.S. Department of Education

Sep 2001Number of states in which biology classes are a high-school graduation requirement: 8
Harper's Index

Source:

Council of Chief State School Officers (Washington)

Sep 2001Chance that a Denver middle-school student was suspended at least once during the 1999-2000 school year: 1 in 4
Harper's Index

Source:

Colorado Department of Education (Denver)

Sep 2001Chance that a U.S. sixth- to tenth-grader reports being bullied weekly: 1 in 11
Harper's Index

Source:

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Bethesda, Md.)

Sep 2001Chance that a sixth- to tenth-grader reports bullying others: 1 in 12
Harper's Index

Source:

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Bethesda, Md.)

Sep 2001Percentage of U.S. ninth-grade boys who say we should stop "outsiders" from influencing American traditions and cultures: 53
Harper's Index

Source:

National Center for Education Statistics (Washington)

Sep 2001Number of Austrian skinheads who have attended college classes this year as an alternative to criminal prosecution: 33
Harper's Index

Source:

Johannes Kepler University (Linz, Austria)

Sep 2001Minimum number of countries in which at least half the children are no longer in school by the age of eleven: 11
Harper's Index

Source:

Harper's research

Sep 2001Price of Bob Dylan's high-school essay on The Grapes of Wrath, from a New York City collectibles dealer: $35,000
Harper's Index

Source:

Gotta Have It Collectibles (N.Y.C.)

Sep 2001Amount the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, police began offering high-school students this year to inform on their classmates: $50
Harper's Index

Source:

Cedar Rapids Police Department (Cedar Rapids, Iowa)

Sep 2001Minimum number of U.S. high schools whose students chose a custodian as a graduation speaker last spring: 2
Harper's Index

Source:

Harper's research

Sep 2001Number of times the President has met with Miss America this year to discuss her interest in "character education": 2
Harper's Index

Source:

Miss America Organization (Atlantic City)

May 2001Chance that a page in the middle-school textbook Science Insights contains a serious factual error: 1 in 10
Harper's Index

Source:

David and Lucile Packard Foundation (Los Altos, Calif.)

May 2001Compensation awarded a 30-year-old Australian in February for corporal punishment he suffered in high school: $1,500,000
Harper's Index

Source:

Supreme Court of New South Wales (Sydney)

Apr 2001Percentage of U.S. high school sex-ed teachers who say that abstinence is the only birth-control method they cover: 23
Harper's Index

Source:

Alan Guttmacher Institute (N.Y.C.)

Mar 2001Annual number of U.S. elementary school students who play The Stock Market Game, a 10-week trading simulation: 200,000
Harper's Index

Source:

Securities Industry Foundation for Economic Education (N.Y.C.)

Feb 2001Weeks that a Massachusetts school prohibited a boy from cross-dressing last fall before a judge overturned the ban: 13
Harper's Index

Source:

Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (Boston)

Jan 2001Amount the U.S. Army plans to pay the entertainment industry this year to develop training videos for combat: $45,000,000
Harper's Index

Source:

U.S. Army Press Office (Arlington, Va.)

Jan 2001Change since 1981 in minutes per day devoted to homework by Americans between nine and eleven years old: +9
Harper's Index

Source:

Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)

Dec 2000Rank of Bill Clinton among the “most important people in the world today,” according to U.S. schoolchildren: 1
Harper's Index

Source:

World Almanac for Kids, Primedia Publications (Mahwah, N.J.)

Dec 2000Rank of the Pope, J. K. Rowling, and God among the “most important people in the world today,” according to U.S. schoolchildren, respectively: 2, 13, 19
Harper's Index

Source:

World Almanac for Kids, Primedia Publications (Mahwah, N.J.)

Dec 2000Rank of “myself” among the “most important people in the world today,” according to U.S. schoolchildren: 11
Harper's Index

Source:

World Almanac for Kids, Primedia Publications (Mahwah, N.J.)

Nov 2000Number of families in a Texas town who have sued the school district over its adoption of random drug testing: 1
Harper's Index

Source:

American Civil Liberties Union of Texas (Austin)

Nov 2000Points by which the average SAT score of a home-schooled student exceeds that of other U.S. students: 81
Harper's Index

Source:

The College Board (N.Y.C.)

Nov 2000Percentage of U.S. public school teachers who hold a second job: 59
Harper's Index

Source:

National Education Association (Washington)

Sep 2000Amount contributed for a University of Nebraska English chair last June by the founder of CliffsNotes: $250,000
Harper's Index

Source:

University of Nebraska Foundation (Lincoln)

Aug 2000Average number of words in the written vocabulary of a 6- to 14-year-old American child in 1945: 25,000
Harper's Index

Source:

H. D. Rinsland, A Basic Vocabulary of Elementary School Children, Macmillan (N.Y.C.)

May 2000Points by which the percentage of U.S. college students who are “frequent binge drinkers” has changed since 1993: +3
Harper's Index

Source:

Harvard School of Public Health (Cambridge, Mass.)

May 2000Chance that a college student expects to be a millionaire by the age of 40: 1 in 2
Harper's Index

Source:

The JOBTRAK Corp. (Los Angeles)

Feb 2000Number of textbook reproductions of George Washington Crossing the Delaware retouched by a Georgia school last year: 2,322
Harper's Index

Source:

Muscogee County School District (Columbus, Ga.).

Feb 2000Number of parental complaints that prompted a Georgia school to decide that Washington's watch fob resembled genitalia: 0
Harper's Index

Source:

Muscogee County School District (Columbus, Ga.).

Jan 2000Percentage of Americans who believe that sex education should be a required school subject: 60
Harper's Index

Source:

The Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.)

Jan 2000Percentage change in enrollment in U.S. college-level French and German courses since 1995: -4.5
Harper's Index

Source:

Modern Language Association (N.Y.C.)

Dec 1999Year in which Congress banned the State Department's military training program for Indonesian troops: 1992
Harper's Index

Source:

Office of Representative Lane Evans (Washington)

Dec 1999Year in which the Pentagon's military training program for Indonesian troops ended: 1998
Harper's Index

Source:

Office of Representative Lane Evans (Washington)

Nov 1999Margin by which the ten-member Kansas Board of Education voted to drop human evolution from the curriculum this year: 2
Harper's Index

Source:

Kansas State Department of Education (Topeka, Kans.)

Sep 1999Chance that an American murdered at school in the last two years was a girl: 1 in 4
Harper's Index

Source:

The National School Safety Center (Westlake Village, Calif.)

Sep 1999Chance that an American murdered at school between 1992 and 1994 was a girl: 1 in 20
Harper's Index

Source:

The National School Safety Center (Westlake Village, Calif.)

Sep 1999Estimated rounds of ammunition bought by the City University of New York since 1995 to train its security force: 110,000
Harper's Index

Source:

City University of New York (N.Y.C.)

Sep 1999Number of U.S. high schools that have hired a Massachusetts firm to test students' hair for evidence of drug use: 80
Harper's Index

Source:

Psychemedics Corporation (Cambridge, Mass.)

Sep 1999Hours of helicopter lessons required for the new “Super Butler” degree at London's most expensive butler school: 60
Harper's Index

Source:

Ivor Spencer International School (London)

Aug 1999Ratio of U.S. students killed in or near schools since last August to those killed in the 1992 school year: 1:2
Harper's Index

Source:

The National School Safety Center (Westlake Village, Calif.)

Aug 1999Chance that a student death at school in the last year was a suicide: 1 in 5
Harper's Index

Source:

The National School Safety Center (Westlake Village, Calif.)

Aug 1999Chance that the murder of a student at school in the last two years was caused by beating, strangling, or knife wounds: 1 in 4
Harper's Index

Source:

The National School Safety Center (Westlake Village, Calif.)

Aug 1999Percentage change since last year in the number of Russians enrolled in Hebrew classes: +80
Harper's Index

Source:

Jewish Agency for Israel (Moscow)

Jul 1999Average number of murders a U.S. child sees on television by the end of elementary school: 8,000
Harper's Index

Source:

Reason to Hope, American Psychological Association (Washington)

Jul 1999Bags of potpourri that the Littleton, Colorado, fire department made from flowers placed at Columbine High School: 3,000
Harper's Index

Source:

Littleton Fire Department (Littleton, Colo.)

Jul 1999Number of academic chairs worldwide devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence: 1
Harper's Index

Source:

Professor William Welch, University of California (Berkeley, Calif.)

Jun 1999Ratio of attendance at Mother Teresa's last Oxford University talk to attendance at Jerry Springer's: 1:1
Harper's Index

Source:

Oxford University Union (Oxford, U.K.)

Apr 1999Number of Ivy League egg “donors” that Options Fertility Registry's school newspaper ads have found since 1997: 18
Harper's Index

Source:

Options National Fertility Registry (Garden Grove, Calif.)

Apr 1999Distance in miles between the Stanford dorm room of Chelsea Clinton and that of Carolyn Starr, daughter of Kenneth: 0.7
Harper's Index

Source:

Harper's research

Mar 1999Number of times one New Jersey high school was evacuated in the last school year due to bomb threats: 30
Harper's Index

Source:

Superintendent, Lower Camden County Regional High School District 1 (N.J.)

Feb 1999Amount a fourth-grade Denver class has raised since last March to buy and free Sudanese slaves: $35,000
Harper's Index

Source:

American Anti-Slavery Group (Somerville, Mass.)

Feb 1999Number of Sudanese no longer enslaved as a result of the efforts a fourth-grade Denver class: 600
Harper's Index

Source:

American Anti-Slavery Group (Somerville, Mass.)

Feb 1999Estimated number of wind-surfing lessons per week provided for soldiers at Kuwait's U.S. Army base: 60
Harper's Index

Source:

U.S. Army, Camp Doha (Kuwait)

Jan 1999Number of words devoted to the Depression in Houghton Mifflin's fifth-grade history book, Build Our Nation: 332
Harper's Index

Source:

Build Our Nation, Houghton Mifflin (Boston)

Jan 1999Estimated number of colleges that Newt Gingrich's high-school football coach queried in vain for a big enough helmet: 5
Harper's Index

Source:

James “Bubba” Ball (Columbus, Ga.)

Dec 1998Number of Harvard fellowships endowed by members of Osama bin Laden's family since 1992: 2
Harper's Index

Source:

Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)

Dec 1998Chance that a gay Massachusetts teenager reports being threatened or injured at school in the last year: 1 in 4
Harper's Index

Source:

Massachusetts Department of Education (Malden, Mass.)

Dec 1998Chance that a House member voted last June in favor of a constitutional amendment allowing school prayer: 1 in 2
Harper's Index

Source:

Congressional Record (Washington)/Time magazine (N.Y.C.)

Oct 1998Amount Microsoft offers any computer-science professor who mentions its programs in an academic presentation: $200
Harper's Index

Source:

Grant/Jacoby, Inc. (Chicago)

Oct 1998Chance that a president of one of the nation's 50 top-ranked universities serves on at least one corporate board: 1 in 2
Harper's Index

Source:

Multinational Monitor (Washington)

Oct 1998Estimated number of U.S. high school students enrolled in first-year Latin classes last year: 88,600
Harper's Index

Source:

American Classical League and National Junior Classical League (Mount Vernon, Va.)

Oct 1998Number of U.S. high school students enrolled in first-year Latin classes in 1962: 700,000
Harper's Index

Source:

American Classical League and National Junior Classical League (Mount Vernon, Va.)

Oct 1998Number of “Assault Recovery” insurance policies sold to school employees in the last year: 207
Harper's Index

Source:

Horace Mann Life Insurance Company (Springfield, Ill.)

Oct 1998Minimum amount of salsa that USDA regulations allow a public school to offer as a serving of vegetables, in tablespoons: 2
Harper's Index

Source:

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Oct 1998Number of Taco Bell franchises that are owned by the U.S. schools in which they operate: 250
Harper's Index

Source:

Taco Bell Corporation (Irvine, Calif.)

Sep 1998Percentage of full-time U.S. undergraduates who are over the age of 22: 36
Harper's Index

Source:

National Education Data Resource Center (Alexandria, Va.)

Sep 1998Percentage of U.S. universities that use student evaluations as a factor in granting tenure: 88
Harper's Index

Source:

Professor Peter Seldin, Pace University (N.Y.C.)

Sep 1998Percentage of U.S. universities that used student evaluations as a factor in granting tenure in 1973: 23
Harper's Index

Source:

Professor Peter Seldin, Pace University (N.Y.C.)

Sep 1998Days a Denver school principal was put on leave last May for allowing students a sip of wine on a trip to Paris: 13
Harper's Index

Source:

Student Achievement Services, Cherry Creek School District (Greenwood, Colo.)

Sep 1998Average number of public school students expelled each school day last year for gun possession: 34
Harper's Index

Source:

U.S. Department of Education

Sep 1998Chance that a U.S. public high school has at least one police officer stationed there full-time: 1 in 5
Harper's Index

Source:

National Center for Education Statistics (Washington)

Sep 1998Percentage of all girls' school facilities in Afghanistan's Taliban territories shut down since 1996: 100
Harper's Index

Source:

Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations (N.Y.C.)

Jul 1998Number of days last March that a Georgia teen was suspended after wearing a Pepsi shirt on his school's “Coke Day”: 1
Harper's Index

Source:

Greenbrier High School (Evans, Ga.)

Jun 1998Ratio of California prison jobs created between 1984 and 1994 to state jobs in higher education cut during that time: 3:1
Harper's Index

Source:

Justice Policy Institute (Washington)

May 1998Chance that a U.S. high school student owns a promotional item from a cigarette company: 1 in 3
Harper's Index

Source:

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (Lebanon, N.H.)

July 26, 2008 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill requiring that students in the state's public schools be taught about global warming.
Weekly Review

By Christian Lorentzen
Source:

San Jose Mercury News

September 18, 2007Sherri Shepherd, one of the hosts of “The View,” was criticized for not knowing for sure whether the earth is round.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source 1:

AFP

Source 2:

The Seattle Times

Source 3:

The Huffington Post

September 13, 2007 Yale University exhibited tools used by Ivan Pavlov to measure dog drool, including one saliometer given as a gift to the daughter of a Yale professor.
Weekly Review

By Sam Stark
Source:

Hartford Courant

April 13, 2007A leaked, X-rated DVD sent to parents of elementary school students in Illinois featured the principal having sex with a teacher on his desk, next to a pile of standardized tests.
Weekly Review

By Gemma Sieff
Source:

CBS2Chicago

April 13, 2007A study found that students who participated in federally endorsed sexual abstinence programs were as likely to have sex as those who did not. “This report confirms that these interventions are not like vaccines. You can't expect one . . . small dose to be protective all throughout the youth's high school career,” said the commissioner of the Family and Youth Services Bureau.
Weekly Review

By Gemma Sieff
Source:

AP via CNN

March 28, 2007Researchers discovered that Canadian school bullies were forcing their girlfriends to strip online.
Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
Source:

Reuters

February 11, 2007 Harvard University named historian Drew Gilpin Faust as its first female president.
Weekly Review

By Gemma Sieff
Source:

CBS

January 10, 2007Members of the Baker's Dozen, an all-male Yale a cappella group recuperating from injuries they suffered when a gang of prep school students attacked them on New Year's Eve, were asked by police to return to San Francisco to identify their assailants. “The kids are scared shitless,” said a father of one of the singers.
Weekly Review

By Christian Lorentzen
Source:

San Francisco Chronicle

November 16, 2006Parents in Illinois were lodging complaints against an elementary school library for carrying And Tango Makes Three, a children's book based on a true story about gay male penguins.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

CBS 3

November 8, 2006The principal of a high school in North Carolina apologized after an excerpt of a speech by Joseph Goebbels was played over the PA system during a soccer game.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

CNN

October 18, 2006A Massachusetts elementary school banned tag.
Weekly Review

By Gemma Sieff
Source:

CBS News

October 12, 2006 Libya announced that it would provide laptop computers for 1.2 million schoolchildren.
Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
Source:

AP via local6.com

October 8, 2006A Virginia biology teacher was suspended after compelling her students to pose with the bones of a century-old corpse in Pocahontas Cemetery.
Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
Source:

North Country Gazette

October 3, 2006President George W. Bush visited George W. Bush elementary school in Stockton, California, and promised to improve school safety.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source 1:

CNN

Source 2:

CNN

Source 3:

NBC12

Source 4:

MSNBC

Source 5:

Whitehouse.gov

July 19, 2006A study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania discovered a positive correlation between education and sunburn.
Weekly Review

By Theodore Ross
Source:

Washington Post

July 13, 2006A girls' softball coach at Beaver Falls High School in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, was in trouble for having sex with a 17-year-old softball player.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Beaver County Times & Allegheny Times

June 28, 2006In Nigeria a professor at Olabisi Onabanjo University was found dead behind Poopola Hospital in Ijebu-Igbo; Professor Oyedola is believed to have been killed by one of two warring campus cults--either the Eiye Confraternity or the Buccaneers.
Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
Source:

Vanguard

June 2, 2006In Washington, D.C., a 13-year-old girl won the Scripps National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling “Ursprache.”
Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
Source:

ABC News

May 1, 2006A 1918 letter emerged that appears to show that the members of the Yale Skull and Bones society stole the skull of the Apache leader Geronimo from its grave, and may have used it in rituals.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Yale Alumni Magazine

March 19, 2006Tresa Waggoner, an elementary school music teacher in Bennett, Colorado, was suspended from her job after local parents complained that she was a lesbian devil worshiper; the parents drew this conclusion after learning that Waggoner showed her classes a videotape of the opera Faust performed with sock puppets.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

The Los Angeles Times

March 9, 2006A sociology professor at Suffolk University, Boston, was suspended after being caught browsing Internet porn sites while teaching a class; he was unaware that his computer was connected to a display behind him.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

7News Boston

February 2, 2006An Arizona State University student was arrested for masturbating in a school library. "To be honest," he explained, "the Internet connection at my dorm isn't good enough."
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Web Devil

January 29, 2006A substitute teacher in Santa Cruz, California, was sentenced to a year in jail for filming young boys licking whipped cream off each other's toes. "I used very poor judgment," said the teacher.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

The Mercury News

January 11, 2006A Maryland school superintendent decided to lift a ban on the book The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things in high-school libraries; the ban remained in effect for middle-school libraries.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

WGAL.com

December 28, 2005U.S. school buses were increasingly being plastered with advertisements.
Weekly Review

Source:

CBS News

December 1, 2005A Jasper County, Georgia, eighth-grader was dismissed from school after he took down a video camera installed in the school's boys' bathroom; it turned out that the camera had been placed there by the school principal so that he could observe the boys.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

WMAZ.com

November 30, 2005In Phoenix, Arizona, a 14-year-old freshman at Barry Goldwater High School was arrested for raping a 75-year-old woman.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

AZCentral.com

November 18, 2005The Vatican announced that Intelligent Design was not science and did not belong in science classrooms.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

KSAT.com

November 4, 2005Forty-seven schoolchildren were stung by beesin Maryland.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Reuters

October 25, 2005In Los Angeles a man dressed as Sesame Street's Elmo was arrested for panhandling.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

ABC News

October 20, 2005 Republican groups were calling on the federal government to halt all funds to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which currently receives $400 million each year in federal funding. "That is enough money," said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, "to build 40 elementary schools."
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

CBC.ca

September 30, 2005During his radio program William Bennett, former U.S. Education Secretary, said, "You could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

WLTX.com

August 22, 2005 Connecticut filed a lawsuit that argues that the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind Law is illegal because state and local funds are required to follow the law. "Give up the unfunded mandates," said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, "or give us the money."
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

AP

June 14, 2005A Kansas teenager was in trouble for vomiting on his Spanish teacher.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Boston.com

May 23, 2005In Waxahachie, Texas, the high school student yearbook neglected to include a girl's name in a photo caption, referring to her instead as “Black Girl.”
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

AZCentral.com

May 12, 2005In Utah, a high school teacher brought his class to see the dissection of a live dog. “I thought,” he said, “that it would be just really a good experience.”
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Local6.com

April 29, 2005A middle school in Boulder, Colorado, banned hugging, suggesting that students high-five instead.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

9News.com

April 28, 2005A Colorado high school student decided to test Army recruitment policies by telling a recruiter that he had dropped out of high school and was addicted to marijuana. The recruiter told the student how to get a fake diploma over the Internet and instructed him to take a detoxification formula so that he could pass the Army's drug test.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

CBS 4 Colorado

April 27, 2005A state representative in Alabama put forward a bill that would prohibit school libraries from purchasing books by gay authors. The measure died when not enough state legislators showed up to vote.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

CBS Evening News

April 21, 2005A high school in Pennsylvania prohibited students from carrying any kind of bag aside from lunch bags, which will be inspected.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

WNEP16

March 30, 2005 Turkeys attacked elementary school students in Indiana.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

IndyStar.com

March 26, 2005 Harvard students were upset that the brand-name cereals in their dining halls had been replaced with generic brands.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Boston Globe

March 25, 2005The National Rifle Association suggested that rampages like the one in which a Minnesota youth killed nine and himself in Minnesota could be stopped if teachers armed themselves.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Newsday

March 23, 2005 Florida lawmakers were considering an Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, intended to stamp out “leftist totalitarianism,” that would allow students to sue teachers who insist that evolution is factual.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

Alligator.org

March 23, 2005Senator Bill Frist--a doctor who as a Harvard medical student adopted pound cats as pets, then killed them to practice his surgical technique--diagnosed Terri Schiavo from afar, suggesting that her condition could improve.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

New York Times

March 22, 2005In Minnesota, an overweight loner Chippewa neo-Nazi goth teenager shot and killed his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend, then went to his high school and shot and killed a security guard, five students, a teacher, and himself.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

BBC News

March 18, 2005Police in Florida arrested a five-year-old girl at her kindergarten, binding her hands with plastic ties and placing handcuffs around her ankles. The girl, who weighs forty pounds, was upset about some jelly beans. “They set my baby up,” said her mother.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

AP

March 8, 2005An Oregon high-school teacher was under investigation for licking the bleeding wounds of his students.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

The Register-Guard

February 1, 2005 Evolution was not being taught in many U.S. high schools.
Weekly Review

By Theodore Ross
Source:

The New York Times

January 13, 2005A federal judge ordered Cobb County, Georgia, schools to remove from biology textbooks all stickers that question the theory of evolution.
Weekly Review

By Paul Ford
Source:

The Guardian

December 16, 2004 President Bush made privatizing social security a major priority for his second term, and his daughter Jenna considered becoming a schoolteacher.
Weekly Review

By Theodore Ross and Arno Kopecky
Source:

New York Times

December 2, 2004A report found that a federally funded program to promote abstinence in schools has been teaching students that a 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person," abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, touching a person's genitals can result in pregnancy, and HIV can be spread by sweat and tears. One book preaches the story of a knight who rejects a princess when she becomes too opinionated about how best to slay a dragon. The parable concludes: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it may lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."
Weekly Review

By Margaret Cordi
Source:

Washington Post

November 5, 2004An Air National Guard warplane fired its 20-millimeter cannon at an elementary school in Little Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey.
Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge
Source:

New York Times

September 30, 2004 Iraqi schoolchildren were still waiting to start school, which has remained closed because of the ongoing civil war.
Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge
Source:

New York Times

September 16, 2004A Texas judge found that the state's system of educational funding is unconstitutional.
Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge
Source:

New York Times

July 30, 2004The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that truancy because of fear of schoolyard violence was on the rise.
Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge
Source:

Associated Press

July 7, 2004Governor Jeb Bush was asked to list the angles on a three-four-five triangle, a question that appears on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which high school students must pass to graduate. Bush replied: "I don't know, 125, 90, and whatever remains of 180?"
Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge
Source:

Associated Press