Do voters take school test scores into account when deciding whether to support a school board candidate? These days, don’t count on it.

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago found that in 2002 and 2004 school board elections held in South Carolina, students’ performance on standardized tests (in math and reading) [...]

Clarkstown North High School students who walked out of class on Wednesday to protest a vermin infestation at the school will not have disciplinary referrals included in their files.

School principal Harry Leonardatos told me in an interview this morning that while the schoo’s code of conduct dictates that an unexcused absence—students who took part in [...]

The morning evacuation and Spitzer absence notwithstanding, NYSSBA Executive Director Timothy Kremer said that Day 2 of the convention (it started yesterday and ends Sunday afternoon) went well.

There’s been lots of positive feedback, he said. “People feel they’ve had a worthwhile day.”

NYSSBA officials said that today’s most popular seminars included one on tech-savvy “millenial children” [...]

No education conference these days would be complete without talk of the federal No Child Left Behind law, and this year’s NYSSBA convention is no exception.

New York state Education Commissioner Richard Mills defended the law during question and answer session this afternoon. He said that NCLB, despite its “rough edges”, has “helped us in a [...]

Gov. Eliot Spitzer was supposed to be at today’s convention to receive the NYSSBA 2007 President’s Award “for his significant contributions to state public education”, according to the convention program…but, as I just learned, he didn’t show.

Why? Blame the goings-on in our nation’s capital. Apparently Spitzer attended a meeting in Washington D.C. this morning that [...]

There’s a neat perk for school officials registered for today’s conference: NYSSBA is giving all of them a chance to get their photos taken in front of New York City landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Times Square…without leaving the hotel.

Conference participants stand in front of a green screen—the same type of screen [...]

While I was at the cyberbullying session, Clarkstown school board president John Davidson was a seminar on “green design” for school buildings. According to the NYSSBA brochure, “better designed buildings can preserve energy and natural resources for future generations.”

Preserving energy, of course, can make for lower school electricity bills—music to the ears of any taxpayer [...]

When I walked into a session entitled “Tackling Cyberbullying Through Policy”, I was surprised to see that there were well over a dozen chairs still empty in the conference room.

Judith Schurmacher, a school board member with the North Salem school district, was surprised too.

Schurmacher said that she personally didn’t know of cyberbullying in her district, [...]

I found Mt. Pleasant superintendent Alfred Lodovico relaxing on a chair just outside a conference room. He had just finished attending a seminar on “identifying and developing aspiring administrators”—in other words, it was about convincing teachers to give up their 186-day work year to become administrators.

Lodovico said generally, that’s not easy. Besides the difference in [...]

We are now inside the hotel again and the conference seems to be back on track. I’m happy to report that I’m not seeing any smoke in the lobby. Phew.

Just before we went back in, I caught up with Charles Trainor, the president of the Briarcliff Manor school board. Trainor saw a bright side to [...]

A very miffed-sounding reader left me an anonymous message this morning noting that there had been a vocabulary error in today’s story about rats at Clarkstown North. It was in the following sentence: “Keller-Cogan said she appraised parents of the issue in a letter dated Friday.”

Did you find the goof? It came in the form [...]

This one’s from the “In Case You Missed It” file—it seems the majority of students at both Rockland and Westchester community colleges are satisfied with their schools, according to the results of a new survey. You can find my story on the survey here or check out the NewsCenter Now segment below.

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For the first time, schools will be closed tomorrow for Eid al-Fitr (the holiday that marks the end of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan) at New Jersey’s Cliffside Park school district. Cliffside Park isn’t alone: According to the New York Times, more school districts in the Garden State are closing for [...]

What happens when a school starts the year with too few teachers and too many students? What about too many teachers and too few students? Find out in the NewsCenter Now segment below. (For the story that spurred the segment, click here.)

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Should parents of special education students try public schools first before turning to (and using government funds to pay for) private schools? Former Viacom CEO Tom Freston says no. Freston, whose son has learning disabilities, sued New York City after the city refused to pay his son’s tuition at a Manhattan private school for children [...]