News & Issues

A national leadership organization for secondary students announced several winners from Illinois and Maryland at a recent conference in San Antonio. Congratulations to these hard-working students. Check out the organization.

The US Education Department has published applications for the Race to the Top—District competition, which will make up to $40 million available to individual school districts that show promise of reducing achievement gaps between subgroups of students.

Back-to-school spending was expected to increase this year, following a 2-year decline. Some families in Anne Arundel County, Md., came to an expo at which school supplies were given away for free to students whose families were unable to purchase all the needed supplies.

Catholic schools, facing occasional closures and declining enrollments, might reinvent themselves in order to save their schools and preserve their religious values, if not their edicts.

The Quincy Federation of Teachers was one of five nationwide Innovation Fund grantees. They will use the money to educate their western Illinois community about the Common Core. We have some suggestions.

The back-to-school days, coming everywhere in Maryland before September again, mark the start of what state education officials hope will be a very good year.

A study out of the University of Illinois, Chicago, suggests that competitive food sales in schools and the laws that govern them can play a small role in reducing the obesity problem in America's children. The study is far from conclusive but worth looking at.

Rep. Paul Ryan has a full-featured voting record and a bunch of statements concerning education. We point you to a few that have been uncovered in the press.