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Virtual public schools, which allow students to take all their classes online, have exploded in popularity across the United States, offering what supporters view as innovative and affordable alternatives to the conventional classroom.

With school in full swing across the United States, the littlest students are getting used to the blocks table and the dress-up corner - and that staple of American public education, the standardized test.

Average reading and writing SAT scores for high school students declined to their lowest levels while math results stalled in the exam used for admission at most U.S. colleges. For the class of 2012, the average critical reading score fell 1 point to 496 from a year earlier, the lowest since data became available in 1972, according to a report released today by the New York-based College Board, which administers the test. The average score for writing dropped 1 point to 488, the lowest since writing was added to the exam in 2006. Math results were unchanged at 514. Scores can range from 200 to 800.

A parent mentor program started in one Chicago neighorhood in 1995 has been adopted by other neighborhood groups and the city's school district, spreading to 29 schools.

Teachers in the nation's third-largest city will pore over the details of a contract settlement Tuesday as the clock ticks down to an afternoon meeting in which they are expected to vote on ending a seven-day strike that has kept 350,000 students out of class.

The confrontation between Chicago teachers and Mayor Rahm Emanuel escalated on Sunday when their union extended a strike and the mayor said he would go to court to block the walkout, risking more friction within President Barack Obama's political coalition as the November 6 election nears.

The city's nearly weeklong teachers strike appeared headed toward a resolution Friday after negotiators emerged from marathon talks to say they had achieved a "framework" that could end the walkout in time for students to return to class Monday.

Teachers in Chicago went on strike for the first time in 25 years on Monday in a bitter dispute with Mayor Rahm Emanuel that is reverberating across the country as the issues at the core of the conflict — teacher evaluations tied to student test scores, a longer school day and other education policy changes — are being hotly debated from Hawaii to Maine.

Colleges increasingly are banning smoking or tobacco products altogether from campus. The University of Oklahoma, the University of Oregon and Montana State University are among those which have enacted campuswide bans this year. The University of California system announced in January that by 2014 all of its campuses would ban use or sale of cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

Harlem parents have been expressing frustration at the still limited number of high-quality choices in the city’s push to add charter schools in the neighborhood.