Quick Hits

Florida State students plan to raise $100K for faculty salaries: A volunteer group of Florida State University students has launched a fundraising campaign called "Protect Our Professors" to save faculty who are in danger of being laid off. (Tallahassee Democrat)

St. Louis preschool offers therapy, healing to abused children: Before he got kicked out of school twice, William had been addicted to cocaine, abused, neglected and abandoned — but this was no teenager. Just a scant over 3 feet tall, he had yet to turn 4. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Lawmaker wants ban on seclusion rooms for children with disabilities: School seclusion rooms for children with disabilities would be banned under a bill introduced Tuesday by state Sen. Scott Rupp. He said he wanted to eliminate the rooms "until the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education can prove they serve a worthwhile purpose." (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Creative Leaders' Will to Succeed Is Key to KIPP: Jaime Escalante, the man who taught me the power of great teaching, had a Spanish word he used often in his East Los Angeles math classes: ganas. It meant the will to succeed, the urge to make an extra effort. (Washington Post)

5 Myths About Education Reform: To borrow from the old quip on giving up smoking: Fixing public schools is easy -- we've done it hundreds of times. Even with the billions of dollars in economic stimulus aid, public schools stand no chance of getting better until we dispel some empty theories about how to help them. 1. We know how to fix public schools; we just lack the political will to finish the job. 2. Teachers know best how to teach kids; policymakers should leave them alone. 3. The federal government meddles too much in the affairs of local schools. 4. Teacher unions are the enemy. 5. There's no place in education for politics. (Washington Post)

School officials apologize to student over shirt saga: Staff at Big Bear High School violated a student's Constitutional right to free speech when they ousted her from class and ordered her to remove her T-shirt sporting the message "Prop. 8 Equals Hate," officials said.(San Bernardino County Sun)

$50,000 claim filed over girl's time-out in school: A $50,000 legal claim alleges that Greenfield Middle School teachers falsely imprisoned a student when they put her in a time-out room, and that the experience caused the girl to hyperventilate and feel nauseous. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Tennessee State University sued for racial bias against white student: In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Angela Cela accuses TSU and three faculty members of violating her civil rights. The complaint says TSU refused to give Cela, a Pacific Islander, a financial grant available to graduate students in speech pathology and audiology because she isn't black. (The Tennessean)

GI Bill produces a shock in Texas: The Veterans Affairs Department released a preliminary list of the maximum tuition and fees it will cover under the new GI Bill, and the numbers are startling to say the least. (San Antonio Express-News)

Economy Hits Hard on Black Campuses: Historically black institutions have disadvantages when it comes to weathering hard times: smaller endowments and a higher proportion of students who are facing a credit crunch. (New York Times)

Schools try to mend racial sting: "Marshmallow," "Buckwheat" and "Shrimp boat" became "I'm sorry" Tuesday and turned a racial flare-up into a teaching moment, two high school principals said. (Rocky Mountain News)

Wisconsin girl, 14, arrested for classroom texting...: A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl who refused to stop texting during a high school math class was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, according to police. The teenager was busted last Wednesday at Wauwatosa East High School after she ignored a teacher's demand that she cease texting. (Smoking Gun)

Charter schools struggle to secure suitable campuses: L.A. Unified is required to provide space for charter schools, but many have been operating out of hotels and sharing campuses with traditional schools for years as unused campuses remain closed. More than five years ago, Ivy Academia's campus was a Hilton hotel. (Los Angeles Times)

Held Back: St. Louis Public Schools' 100-year deed restriction bans charter schools from setting up shop in the city's abandoned classrooms: Rhonda Broussard went out shopping in late 2007 for a building to house the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools, a set of French- and Spanish-speaking public charter schools she plans to open this fall. Broussard pulled up in front of the old Hodgen Elementary School hopped out of the car and said to herself, "I want that school." There was only one problem. The St. Louis Public Schools was set on selling the building for $1 million -- but not to charter-school operators. (Riverfront Times)

NJ principal spots fire at teacher's house: She's not just a school principal - she's a rescuer. Principal Jill MacIntosh noticed flames shooting out of a garbage can as she drove to work Tuesday at Washington Street Elementary School in Toms River. It turned out that the fire was on the property of Wendy Yorke, a third-grade teacher at her school who is home on maternity-leave with her 4-month-old son. (H-L)

Illinois Student Newspaper Gets Censored: The Administration of Chicago State University, in a case eerily reminiscent of The Governor's State case of a few years ago, has prevented an issue of the student newspaper from being published. (Student Press Law Center)

Big Changes on the Way in Lending to Students: The Obama administration outlined a vast overhaul of financial aid programs for college students, one that would end years of federal support to banks and other lenders. (NY Times)

In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth: One idea that elite universities like Yale, sprawling public systems like Wisconsin and smaller private colleges like Lewis and Clark have shared for generations is that a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning that the humanities develop have a different purpose: They are prerequisites for personal growth and participation in a free democracy, regardless of career choice. But in this new era of lengthening unemployment lines and shrinking university endowments, questions about the importance of the humanities in a complex and technologically demanding world have taken on new urgency. (NY Times)

Scholastic Accused of Misusing Book Clubs: A consumer watchdog group accuses the children’s publisher of using its classroom book clubs to push video games, jewelry kits and toy cars. (NY Times)

U.S. Court Finds No Vaccine-Autism Link: A special federal court ruled [recently] that there is no persuasive evidence for a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The conclusions came in three test cases heard by special masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, a special court in Washington with jurisdiction over certain suits against the federal government. (The School Law Blog)

District's Ban on Confederate Symbols Upheld: A Missouri school district did not violate the First Amendment when it prohibited students from displaying Confederate flags, a federal appeals court has ruled. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled unanimously in favor of the Farmington school district on Jan. 30. "The record in this case contains evidence of likely racially motivated violence, racial tension, and other altercations directly related to adverse race relations in the community and the school," the court said in B.W.A. v. Farmington R-7 School District. (The School Law Blog)

School sued for refusing gay-straight club: Two Florida high school students on Tuesday sued their school board because they were not allowed to form a club that promotes the tolerance of gays. (MSNBC)

Discipline divides teachers, group: Dwight Anderson says a female student slapped him across the face in front of his entire music class in November, knocking off his glasses. The next day, he said, the girl was sent back to his class as if nothing had happened. (The Advocate)

TECH: Google Publishes Millions Of LIFE Pics: Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google. LIFE photo archive hosted by Google.

Is Arne Duncan Really Margaret Spellings in Drag?: I have been watching and listening to our new secretary of education, trying to understand his views on the most important issues facing our schools and the nation's children. I wanted to believe candidate Barack Obama when he said that he would introduce real change and restore hope. Surely, I thought, he understood that the deadening influence of No Child Left Behind has produced an era of number-crunching that has very little to do with improving education or raising academic standards....the media today defines an education reformer as someone who endorses Republican principles of choice and accountability. (Bridging Differences)

Confusing Test Scores With 'Being Well-Educated': Yes, alas: Duncan’s office is not yet offering a change either of us can believe in. To stimulate the economy, Obama’s education plan includes more focus on charters, and for teachers, schools, and districts that implement so-called “merit pay” based on student test scores. Aside from misdirecting the goals of education, it misdirects the path to a good education. By confusing test scores with “being well-educated,” and the motivation to do a good job as synonymous with financial reward, we undermine values essential to democracy. (Bridging Differences)

Students Reconcile Darwin's Theories With Faith: The state of Kansas has been publicly wrestling with how or whether to teach Darwin's theory of evolution in the public schools. At the University of Kansas, some students are studying biological sciences despite devout Christian faith and a strong belief in the biblical story of creation. They face internal struggles similar to the ones Darwin himself must have felt as he wrestled with his scientific theories about evolution. (NPR)

Louisiana Law Protects Evolution Skeptics In Class: Louisiana passed a law last year that protects teachers who want to raise doubts — what they call "critical thinking" — about controversial science, including evolution. Some are taking advantage of the law, while others are worried about it. (NPR)