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Education category, Page 77

Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at 88
States looking to tackle college indebtedness in K-12 curricula
As student debt approaches $1.6 trillion nationally, presidential candidates are test-driving a raft of proposals to deal with what many consider a major problem. Everything from tuition-free public college to debt forgiveness was on the agenda when 20 Democratic presidential contenders took the debate stage last week. They aren’t alone...
Chevron, Benedum give STEM grants to 43 school districts
Chevron Appalachia and the Benedum Foundation hope a series of grants will put some steam into STEM programs at 43 area school districts. The most recent Innovation Grants, now in their third year, went to 43 school districts in southwestern Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia and eastern Ohio, and totalled nearly...
Former student who reported rape says Marshall University betrayed her
The warnings came in text messages from her friends: He’s outside the dorm. He’s at the student center. He’s at Starbucks. But for Alicia Gonzales, sometimes it didn’t matter where he was. She would often hide away in her room on the campus of Marshall University, overcome with fear that...
Legacy of teacher walkouts could be more political activism
OKLAHOMA CITY — Betty Collins was born and raised in Tulsa, but the eighth grade history teacher hadn’t been to the state Capitol in Oklahoma City until last spring, when she educators throughout the state walked off the job to protest for better wages and public school funding. Since that...
Pa. Gov. Wolf to veto $100M private schools bill
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf plans to veto legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature to substantially expand taxpayer support by $100 million for private and religious schools in Pennsylvania. Wednesday’s statement from Wolf’s office comes a day after the Senate approved the bill on a party-line basis. The bill was sponsored...
Murrysville Woman’s Club awards $6,600 in scholarships
Three Westmoreland County women looking to further their education will have a helping hand from the Murrysville Woman’s Club, whose members awarded them scholarships at a June 6 luncheon. Taylor Franco of Murrysville, Michele Marvich of Greensburg and Danielle Steadman of Mt. Pleasant were the recipients of $6,600 in scholarships...
Franklin Regional life skills students gain marketable experience through shop
Before opening the FR Panther Shop, learning support teacher Michelle Longo first had to learn how to use all of the equipment, so she could show her life-skills students. “We literally learned it all together,” Longo said. Funded by a roughly $12,000 grant from the FR Panther Foundation, special-education students...
Franklin Regional will host technology camp for girls
The Females Embrace Awesome Technology camp, four days of science, technology, engineering and math activities geared toward girls, is set for June 24-27 at Franklin Regional Senior High School. The program will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day. Girls in grades 6-9 will explore computer science and...
Greensburg Salem middle school celebrates summer with ‘chalk the walk’
The sidewalk outside Greensburg Salem Middle School on Main Street is a colorful celebration of summer. It’s tradition on the last week of school for students and teachers to “chalk the walk,” scrawling pictures and encouraging messages outside, said art teacher Brenda Tarris. Tarris organizes the event with fellow art...
Parents outraged after teacher gives autistic student ‘most annoying’ award
It was a special education teacher who picked an 11-year-old autistic boy as the most annoying student of the year. Akalis Castejon is non-verbal autistic. Occasionally he rocks back and forth or shakes, reports ABC News Chicago. His family was shocked when his Northwest Indiana school presented Akalis with a...
Duquesne launches center for ethics in science, technology and law
Duquesne University is creating a new interdisciplinary center exploring the “intersection between ethics and science, technology, and law from a Catholic faith-based perspective,” according to a news release. The Carl G. Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology and Law is scheduled to open this fall with an initial gift...
International visitors and students social media use to be screened
International students and just about everyone else seeking a visa to visit, study or work in the U.S. will have to ante up all of their social media usernames, email addresses and phone numbers from the last five years. The New York Times quoted the State Department as saying the...
SAT’s new rating system faces its own adversity
College admissions testing was long viewed as a great equalizer. All students could aim for a maximum 36 on the ACT or 1600 on the SAT, no matter where they grew up or went to school. Their scores functioned as a currency of merit for a nation that aspired to...
College enrollment in Pennsylvania, U.S. slips further
College enrollments in Pennsylvania and nationwide continued to slip through the spring semester. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which calculates enrollment numbers twice a year, for spring and fall, reported Thursday that college enrollments slipped by 1.7%, or about 300,000 students, between spring 2018 and spring 2019. Although graduate...
Michigan State chooses Stony Brook president as next leader
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Dr. Samuel Stanley Jr., a medical researcher who has led Stony Brook University in New York for nearly a decade, was named Tuesday as the next president of Michigan State University in the wake of the most extensive sexual abuse scandal in sports history. Stanley was...
Thousands of kindergartners unvaccinated without waivers
COLUMBUS, Ohio — States are heatedly debating whether to make it more difficult for students to avoid vaccinations for religious or philosophical reasons amid the worst measles outbreak in decades, but schoolchildren using such waivers are outnumbered in many states by those who give no excuse at all for lacking...
5 things to know about Morehouse student-debt donor Robert F. Smith
Billionaire Robert F. Smith woke up the crowd at Morehouse College commencement ceremony Sunday when he veered off script to share a surprise: He’d be paying off all the student loans for the Class of 2019′s nearly 400 graduates. There was a moment of stunned silence before the grads and...
Schools turn to apps, other tech to guard against shootings
LOS ANGELES — Schools trying to protect kids from mass shootings are turning to gunshot detection systems, cellphone apps and artificial intelligence — a high-tech approach designed to reduce the number of victims. Technology that speeds up law enforcement’s response and quickly alerts teachers and students to danger is a...
Penn State fencing assistant fired over groping allegation
STATE COLLEGE — A woman says she told Penn State University’s head fencing coach that one of his assistants had groped her on a plane, but the coach failed to report her accusation to the school as required. Jennifer Oldham, a North Carolina fencing coach, tells The Philadelphia Inquirer that...
Allegheny, Westmoreland schools get grants for breakfast initiative
Several Westmoreland and Allegheny county schools were awarded grants recently as part of Gov. Tom Wolf’s School Breakfast Initiative. The initiative, which is providing more than 150 schools with grants up to $5,000 this year, is aimed at giving students a healthy breakfast. About $592,000 in grants were given to...
Officials approve phased retirement for state university professors
State officials and faculty members at Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned universities have approved a voluntary phased-retirement program. The agreement, ratified by the oversight board of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, comes as the faculty union and the State System gear up for contract talks and state officials continue work...
Ohio teen loses 115 pounds while walking to school every day
An Ohio student will graduate 115 pounds lighter than when he started high school. Michael Watson, 18, of Canton decided two years ago to do something about his weight. He was 6 foot, 4 inches tall and tipped the scale at 335 pounds, reports CNN. “My self-confidence was zero,” Watson...
Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics will host open house
The Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics will host an open house May 18 for those with an interest in flight-related careers. Representatives from Endeavor Air will be at the school’s main campus, at the Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin, to talk with prospective students. PIA President Suzanne Markle said the...
Roman numerals, anyone? Poll suggests bias against Arabic numerals
Who knows exactly what a new poll says about mathematics in America, but the reactions to a recent poll on the topic are a little alarming. When CivicScience, a Pittsburgh-based market research firm, polled more than 3,200 Americans on the issue of mathematics instruction last week, 56% of the respondents...
‘Run, Hide, Fight’ mindset making way into U.S. schools
BALTIMORE — The actions of students who died tackling gunmen at two U.S. campuses a week apart have been hailed as heroic. At a growing number of schools across the country, they also reflect guidance to students, at least in some situations, to do what they can to disrupt shootings....


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