says the state. 72% of 3rd-10th graders passed the exam which is up 1% from 2006. 7th-9th graders though had increase of 2-3%.

is going to give every kid born in Maine starting in 2009 500 bucks to go to college.

that Harvard University took all the thunder out from Yale when it came to cutting tuition. The articles does not say what plan Yale is going to throw out though.

is out on Charter Schools.

They say between the years of 2004-2007 that 1,200 more charter schools have opened. It looks at a whole bunch of charter school related topics as well.

on the US Educational system is out. It is in three different sections.

The first section looks at student achievement.

The reports shows an increase in NAEP math scores over the past few years.

The report says that no country in the world would even meet the NAEP advance score. The best scoring county was Singapore at 605 points which is 32 points below what is needed to get an advance score.

The second section looks at private high schools loosing students to public high schools. They say higher tuition is causing more private school students to go to public schools.

The third section is on the amount of time needed to teach a subject. They looked at time spent on math in the classroom and time spent on math homework for eighth grade students. Out of the 20 countries looked at 13 decreased time spent in the classroom and seven increased it. 10 countries that decreased time got lower scores, but the USA bucked the trend with higher scores. 5 countries that increased time got higher scores though.

In one small table they say that an increase of 1800 minutes of instruction time a year which is 10 minutes day can have a 19.0 increase in the TIMSS math scores.

towards lower tuition by letting students who have families making between 120,000 to 180,000 bucks pay no more than 10% of their salary towards tuition. They are also going to replace more loans with grants.