out with a new report.

The report deals with out-of-school factors that need to be dealt with in order to help improve the achievement gap. Some of the factors they cite are:

• Reduce the rate of low birth weight children among African Americans
• Reduce drug and alcohol abuse
• Reduce the rates of family violence in low-income households
• Insure that no one suffers from food insecurity
• Provide summer programs for the poor to reduce summer losses in their academic achievement.

I do have to fully agree with them on this. You can talk about spending on schools all you want, but unless you tackle the out-of-school problems you will never fully close the academic gap.

that direct college loans from the federal government soared over the past year to 4.5 million loans

that could be coming to high school education where the schools will move over to hands-on and high-tech approach to learning. Only six out of the 350 high schools in the state are using this model, but it costs 500 grand per school to move to this model.

as another round of teacher cuts are going to go on in the LA school district.

on state run prepaid tuition plans getting hurt by the stock market.

on a record amount of students applying to Georgia colleges. The article also says that HOPE scholarship applicants are also soaring.