Parenting, Education | featured news

With hack days and e-petitions they're pushing for education to keep up with the digital economy. People of an older vintage tend to balk when they see seven-year-olds blithely reprogramming their TV sets, or changing the background on their smartphones. But a few among them believe kids have even more potential when it comes to software — they can actually create programs, if they’re only taught how.

Critics blast New York school's new policies to raise failing exam and class grades to passing scores.

With schools under pressure to meet standardized testing goals, recess has been cut back and even eliminated in some school districts. The irony, experts say, is that schools may be shooting themselves in the foot by taking away playtime that's crucial to a child's growth.

A Pennsylvania mother has decided she does not want her two children to take the two-week-long standardized tests given by her state as part of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Even as schools raise prices on meals, new guidelines under federal consideration threaten to put an added burden on an already budget-strained program.

A Tampa mother is defending her decision to stick her teenage son on a street corner with a sign that says, among other things, "GPA 1.22 ... honk if I need education."...

They don't agree with all of Amy Chua's strict, controversial methods — banning play dates, sleepovers and all grades lower than A. But setting high expectations has some value, they say. In "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" (Penguin Press, 2011), Yale Law School Professor Amy Chua describes child-rearing techniques that, as she puts it, "would seem unimaginable — even legally actionable — to Westerners."

“Texas uses fourth grade reading scores to project the number of prison cells they’re going need 10 years later.”

Evidence for the long-term benefits of breast-feeding — well beyond infancy — continue to grow. In the latest analysis of the academic performance of children who were breast- or bottle-fed, researchers found that breast-fed babies scored higher on tests of math, reading and writing skills at 10 years old, compared with those who were bottle-fed as babies.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 is intended to provide more healthful school meals to a great number of students.With his wife by his side, President Obama on Monday signed the child nutrition bill, strongly pushed by the first lady, who has made nutrition part of her campaign to help the young get healthy.