No more P.E.

...faced with shrinking budgets and growing demands for improved academic performance on standardized tests, mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, many school systems see physical education as a course they can no longer afford.

So we'll have smart, fat, kids? Why is it so hard to find a healthy and intelligent balance in school?

I agree 100% with parents who check what their kids read, watch, etc. But I don't agree with some of their reasons for banning these books.

Come on Captain Underpants isn't banning material! Maybe Harry Potter, only because I'm so sick of seeing them everywhere.

Maybe the heat baked their common sense away?

The State Board of Education made it easier Tuesday for schools to be labeled "excelling" and harder to be dubbed "underperforming."

A new, more lenient formula to rank Arizona schools will save the state money and save dozens of schools from the embarrassment of being labeled "underperforming" a second year in a row.

How easy is it now to make the "excelling" mark?

It also will push about 164 schools into the highest ranking, "excelling."

Only three schools made the "excelling" list last year, the first time Arizona labeled schools.

Again, why did they change the standard ?

Labeling fewer schools "underperforming" will save the state money.

Why go through the testing process at all?

I link you decide.

First Chicago, now Philly. How many other big cities will this happen to?

The Philadelphia School District has asked the state Department of Education for a one-year waiver on complying with the federal law that requires parents to be notified of and allowed to transfer their children out of schools deemed "persistently dangerous."

The district specifically does not want to notify parents by letter that their children attend dangerous schools and that they have the right to transfer. The district contends that the 27 city schools listed as dangerous were so designated, in part, because the school district has been more aggressive in the last year in arresting students while enforcing the district's discipline policy. Numbers of arrests was among the criteria considered when designating dangerous schools.

That NCLB is a mess. If districts can get waivers why have it at all?

Somebody did a doctorate on this?: Home is no place for school. It seems obvious but here are some key findings:

But schools serve important functions far beyond academic learning. Attending school is an important element in the development of the ''whole child.'' Schools, particularly public schools, are the one place where ''all of the children of all of the people come together.'' Can there be anything more important to each child and thus to our democratic society than to develop virtues and values such as respect for others, the ability to communicate and collaborate and an openness to diversity and new ideas? Such virtues and values cannot be accessed on the Internet.

Cool