Tuesday's Extra Credit Reading

In New Orleans, many schools are still shuttered due to their utter destruction by Hurricane Katrina, and many poorer neighborhoods don't have water, garbage collection and other essential city services, but New Orleans does have football! Incredibly, some 62% of the Superdome's rebuilding costs were paid for with $116 millions of taxpayer-provided F.E.M.A. money... It kinda shows the rest of the world what our priorities are.

The achievement levels of many students tends to fall off during the middle school years. This disturbing tendency has been well documented. Yesterday evening, I saw a pretty good video explaining the trend over at ABC News. You too can view the video right here.

The level of alleged corruption in various public school systems throughout New York State is so grave that one grand jury is now urging the appointment of an inspector general in order to oversee that state's 4000 public schools.

Today's Knuckleheads have to be the two Alabama students who thought that it would be cute to set-off firecrackers outside of classrooms only six months after two other teens were arrested for planning a Columbine-type massacre. The alleged malefactors are getting their just desserts...

When schools are out of control in New Zealand, one begins to wonder if there's any place where they are not.

Here's something we like: With tornadoes and other severe weather an ongoing threat to schools, the federal government will be supplying free hazard warning radios to every public school in the country. (There are some 97,000!) We are convinced that this will save lives...
----------------------------Carnival of Education entries are due tonight! See our latest EduPosts here and yesterday's Extra Credit Reading over there.