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Earlier this year, the Obama administration predicted that nearly 80 percent of all public schools nationwide would miss the benchmarks required by the No Child Left Behind Act by the end of 2011. Now that the numbers are in from the Center on Education Policy, the number of schools failing No Child Left Behind is considerably lower than original predictions. However, at a failure rate of almost 50 percent, there is still plenty of concern over what needs to be done to revamp NCLB to make it a more effective means of evaluating school performance across the country.

What is No Child Left Behind?

According to an article at , the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted in 2002 and has demonstrated “sweeping impact” in public schools across the country. This piece of legislation has been instrumental in determining what students would learn, the tests they would take, and the training teachers received. The original intent of the law was to hold all public schools to a national standard, so that students in all locations and from all demographics would receive the same quality education. Targets are established, and schools that meet the targets receive their maximum funding allowance, while schools that fail to make the grade may lose funding and even be subject to closure.

A report at CNN explains that states are required to set proficiency goals, develop testing to accurately assess their progress toward those goals, and report their

School closures have become a hot-button topic across the country, as parents, students, and community members are rising up to protest such actions by their local governments. States like Illinois and New York have all experienced recent confrontations over this issue, as they have struggled to balance budgets and increase the quality of education to the students in their areas. Do closures of underperforming schools really improve the performance of students in those areas? We’ll take a closer look at two of the districts facing this difficult question, as well as research that may question this method as a means of raising the bar on education standards.

This video reports on proposed school closures in Columbus, Ohio.

Chicago Parents Question Closure Decisions

New Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has faced a serious education crisis since taking his office earlier this year. According to numbers from Catalyst Chicago that were reported in Progress Illinois, 140 of the 675 Chicago Public Schools are eligible to be shut down, based on a three-level metric that rests largely on the Illinois Scholastic Assessment Test results. All of the schools on the list were situated in communities largely populated by minority students, which further complicated the issue.

Parents rose up quickly to form a community organization that provided alternatives to closing down schools in their neighborhoods. The agenda, titled, “A Neighborhood’s Agenda for Schools,” included recommendations like hiring and training

The current academic year is now in full swing, but for some Detroit Public Schools, overcrowding issues are showing no signs of waning. Last week, an elementary school in the district was cited by the fire marshal for a jam-packed classroom. Parents and teachers, as well as the teachers’ union for the district, are complaining that district officials are simply not listening to their concerns, and classroom sizes are not changing fast enough to facilitate a safe, positive learning environment.

This report from WXYZ states that "parents are complaining about shocking overcrowding in Detroit schools that has kids sitting on milk crates."

Violations Found at Nolan Elementary

reported last week on a parent of a kindergarten student at Nolan Elementary, Kristol Philpot, who complained that her son was in a classroom with 55 other students. When her concerns went unheeded by the school’s principal, Philpot contacted fire officials about the problem.

“There are completely way too many children in there,” Philpot told the News. “It’s a completely unsafe environment there and they can’t learn. There are 56 children and it’s steadily growing.”

Philpot said she called the fire department because the principal wouldn’t answer her questions on when a new teacher would be brought in to divide the class.

“With the class that size, if there is a hazardous smoke or fire, it’s unsafe for the children. There

The school bus has been a popular mode of transportation for students of all ages for generations - so much so that a week every year has been set aside to focus on the safety of these big yellow vehicles. School Bus Safety Week kicked off this month across the country, and many school districts got into action with school assemblies, events, and reminders to students, drivers, and motorists to keep students safe while they are on the road. We’ll take a look at a few of the school bus events taking place nationwide and a few facts about school buses that you may not know.

The History of School Bus Safety Week

The first School Bus Safety Week was established in 1963 for the state of California, according to the West County Transportation Agency website. The creator of that event, Dick Fischer, took his cause national by 1970, distributing a flyer of information to state directors of transportation across the country. The movement slowly gained momentum until hundreds of school districts from coast to coast began celebrating this week by emphasizing school bus safety for drivers, students, parents, and other motorists sharing the road with these bright buses. Today, the movement is coordinated by the National Transportation Association and the National Association for Pupil Transportation, and it is held the third week in October each year.

A national poster contest is held each year to allow students nationwide to submit designs for the annual promotional poster

The ongoing Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal that has taken months to investigate is now in the punishment phase. Both teachers and administrators involved in the widespread cheating throughout the city are learning their fate, as the first batch of sanctions was handed out by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission. Those first sanctions may set the pace for how the state deals with similar cases of cheating and unprofessional conduct in the future.

Teachers Suspended, Licenses Revoked

According to a report at WTVM , the first batch of 11 educators implicated in the cheating scandal received their punishment from a vote by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission last week. The vote resulted in a two-year suspension of the teaching certificates of the eight teachers included in the group. The three administrators had their certificates revoked.

The punishments are considered rather stiff, particularly in light of the fact that this first batch of educators cooperated fully with investigators, which led to information that will move cases forward against additional individuals within the school system. Gerald Griggs, an attorney representing two of the teachers from Parks Middle School, said his clients were hoping for lesser penalties as a result of their cooperation.

“They felt pressure from the top,” Griggs explained to WTVM. “It was a culture that was going on. They were implicated in making erasures and changing test scores. My two clients that were implicated had admitted it and were being cooperative with authorities.”

When asked