Educators

Three Southern Maryland principals are among the 19 school administrators receiving The Washington Post's Distinguished Educational Leadership Award this year. The award is given annually to educators who go beyond the expectations of their profession to create exceptional learning environments. Chosen by their school systems, the principals were lauded by parents, teachers and other staff members for their approaches to motivating students, teachers and parents. Their profiles appear on Page 3. The winners will be honored next week during a...

ATLANTIC, Va. — NASA's Wallops Flight Facility is hosting more than 120 students and educators for Rocket Week on Virginia's Eastern Shore. The week of events kicks off on Saturday. Each of the attendees will participate in a sounding rocket launch scheduled for Thursday morning. University and community college-level participants will build small experiments that will be launched on a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital sounding rocket. The workshop is in its sixth year and is conducted...

The sixth-graders are lighting up the room with their MacBook Airs, flipped open to Google, Wikipedia and YouTube for a physics assignment. Their classroom is decked out with touch-screen whiteboards, tablets and powerful WiFi connections able to handle a school full of children online at once. "Cool!" Nina Jenkins says, opening links to Web sites that take her deeper into the study of acoustics. She's making a small drum by hand and will record herself playing it on iMovie. At the end, she'll write...

In referring to tea party resistance to Common Core standards in education, Elizabeth Follin [" An education story that remains to be told ," Free For All, June 8] wrote, "[A] great many professional educators, kindergarten through college, agree with the tea party's position. " This is news to me. As a recent recipient of a master's degree in education from the University of Virginia, I have spent recent years in the company of educators from all levels and have yet to find one who believes that Common Core represents the tea party's...

I have always had a special place in my heart for educators. My mother and many others in my family were teachers. My father took me to the one-room schoolhouse in Alabama where he studied. They hardly had any resources, he said, but they did have books and great teachers who helped open the doors of opportunity. And I owe my own ability to understand the world to my parents and some great educators. All of us, of course, owe a debt of gratitude to educators. That's why educational budget cuts and teacher layoffs always trouble me....

On Morton Sherman's desk sits a brown leather journal. It is a nicer, more expensive version than the ones he handed to Alexandria school administrators a few weeks ago, but the purpose is the same. "Part of what we're going to be doing is writing the next chapter of the story of this school district," Sherman, the school system's new superintendent, said he told them. Educators often spend their days running from decision to decision. Sherman said he thinks it is important for them...

They are coaches, mentors and educators. They are the people whom parents rely on to teach and protect their children. But, they can also become a parent's worst nightmare when they betray the trust placed on them by sexually abusing a child. School systems across the Washington area run background checks and host seminars on employee conduct, yet some people slip through the cracks. In Prince William County, educators are taking a second look at their policies and crafting an outreach program for...

ATLANTIC, Va. — NASA's Wallops Flight Facility is hosting more than 120 students and educators for Rocket Week on Virginia's Eastern Shore. The week of events kicks off on Saturday. Each of the attendees will participate in a sounding rocket launch scheduled for Thursday morning. University and community college-level participants will build small experiments that will be launched on a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital sounding rocket. The workshop is in its sixth year...

Prince William County resident Becca Miller DesJardin said that sometimes an idea for her book would come to her while she was cooking dinner for her family. She would scribble thoughts on a sticky note and post it on the microwave. Other times, she would ramble off a word or two, and colleague Beth Ripley Owermohle would know how to finish the sentence. The two educators bounced ideas back and forth for a few months and turned their kitchen tables into...

I live in Newtown, Conn . Most of you have heard of my town by now. It's a sweet place, with a $2 movie theater, a two-hour Labor Day parade and an old-fashioned general store. Our 100-foot flagpole stands tall in the middle of Main Street, a symbol of our small-town-America status. You know also that Newtown is suffering. A man shot and killed 20 of our schoolchildren and six of our educators in a matter of minutes on Dec. 14. Since then, green and white ribbons, the colors of Sandy Hook Elementary School, adorn our...

BALTIMORE — The Maryland State Department of Education says it has approved teacher and principal evaluation plans in 21 Maryland school systems, clearing the way for the state to receive $250 million in federal funds. The department announced the approvals Thursday. Data tied to Maryland's statewide standardized test, the Maryland School Assessment, or MSA, makes up 20 percent of the measure for evaluating teachers. Schools in Montgomery and Frederick counties opted out of the...

Arne Duncan woke at 5:30 a.m. in his Arlington County home, was driven to the airport and folded his 6-foot-5 frame into an aisle seat in coach. The education secretary buckled his seat belt and tilted his head back for a short flight to Atlanta, another stop in his uphill effort to sell the Obama administration's next big idea: pre-kindergarten for every 4-year-old in the country. The pitch on this day was to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican inclined toward the...

On a party line vote, a Senate committee approved a bill Wednesday to update the country's main federal education law by erasing some of its most punitive aspects. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions voted 12 to 10 on the bill filed by chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), with Democrats defeating nearly every amendment Republicans offered. The two parties have been at loggerheads over the appropriate role of the federal government in K-12 public education. Democrats said...

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Students marched through the main Bosnian Serb city of Banja Luka on Wednesday, demanding that the regional government build a promised university dorm, lower the price of education and clean up corruption and organized crime. Police banned the protest route but did not react as about 2,000 people marched anyway. The anti-government protest — the latest in a wave of demonstrations spreading throughout Bosnia — reflects the...

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the amount of time that Mahaley Jones has been absent from her job due to her husband's health. She has been caring for her husband since April, not since late winter as reported earlier. This version has been corrected. The District's state superintendent of education, Hosanna Mahaley Jones, is stepping down to help her husband recover from a heart attack. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) announced Mahaley...

WASHINGTON — The good intentions of No Child Left Behind have not yielded good policy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate education panel said Tuesday as lawmakers began to rewrite the sweeping legislation that governs all schools that receive federal tax dollars. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, opened hearings on the 2001 education law by promising to scrap unworkable parts of that education law and give states more authority to decide how to teach students and to identify...

I sympathize with those who might not be comfortable with the latest plan to rid our schools of at-risk kids. Several educators across the country, including Alexandria Superintendent Morton Sherman, have decided not to call them that anymore. Henceforth they will be known as "at-promise" children. "We use the term 'at-promise' in Alexandria City Public Schools to describe children who have the potential to achieve at a higher rate than they are currently achieving," Sherman said in a July 23 op-ed in the Alexandria Gazette Packet.

Issie Griffith conquered two novels and a 100-page math packet on a recent summer break. So this year, the 12-year-old was ready for her latest load of vacation homework: four books to read, each with written summaries, preparation for the rigors of sixth grade. Now it is just a matter of finishing it up as the days of summer dwindle. "I have a lot to go," said Issie, who spent many hours this summer at the pool, with friends, and at tennis and acting camps. Still, she said, "I know I'm going to get it done.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Regent University and Bishop T.D. Jake are collaborating on international education. Regent announced Monday that it has entered into an educational collaboration with The Potter's House and TDJ Enterprises. Jakes is senior pastor at The Potter's House, a 30,000-member Dallas-based church, and CEO of the for-profit TDJ Enterprises. Regent says in a news release that it will provide registration and certification for educational programs offered by The Potter's House.

WITH MANY District students not proficient in math or reading, it is hard to fault D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) for wanting to focus attention on the need for improvement in public education . Some of the ideas that fuel his wide-ranging legislative effort may have merit. But the imperious way he has tried to seize control of the education agenda — setting himself up as an opponent of Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) — is cause for concern. Mr. Catania last week unveiled legislation , which...