The League of Iowa Human & Civil Rights Agencies

In a 10-page letter to be sent on Tuesday to thousands of school districts and colleges, the Department of Education urges the nation’s educators to ensure that they are complying with their responsibilities to prevent harassment, as laid out in federal laws. The letter is the product of a yearlong review of the federal statutes and case law covering sexual, racial and other forms of harassment, officials said. Issuing the letter took on new urgency in recent weeks because of a string o...

Obama Proposes Overhaul in Education Law 

By Sam Dillon

Published: March 13, 2010, New York Times

The Obama administration on Saturday called for a broad overhaul of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind law, proposing to eliminate divisive provisions, including those that have encouraged instructors to te...

Governors, state school superintendents propose common academic standards

By Nick Anderson, Washington Post

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Several states are poised to adopt standards proposed Wednesday for what students should learn in English and math, a crucial step in President Oba...

The board that controls schools in Raleigh voted 5 to 4 on Tuesday to begin moving away from a policy of busing children throughout the district to achieve economic diversity. Under the plan, subject to final approval this month, students would no longer be assigned by socioeconomic background, and “community assignment zones” would restrict busing distances. Wake County’s current plan, adopted in 2000, kept schools racially integrated but grew unpopular with parents.

WATERLOO - After surveying middle school students' attitudes on racism and bullying, St. Edward's School sixth-graders are proposing ways to deal with the problems. The students presented their ideas Thursday as featured speakers at the Waterloo Commission on Human Rights annual awards luncheon. The 31-question survey, part of a service learning project on the topic, was handed out to all sixth- through eighth-graders at three Cedar Valley Catholic Schools and one unnamed Waterloo public scho...

While law schools added about 3,000 seats for first-year students from 1993 to 2008, both the percentage and the number of black and Mexican-American law students declined in that period, according to a study by a Columbia Law School professor. What makes the declines particularly troubling, said the professor, Conrad Johnson, is that in that same period, both groups improved their college grade-point averages and their scores on the Law School Admission Test, or L.S.A.T.

While students at an all-girls school in Montgomery County were laboring one day last month to build bridges out of popsicle sticks, their teachers were trying to build bridges for them into the male-dominated field of engineering. The popsicle-stick bridges shattered under 60 pounds of pressure. Teachers at the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda hope their seemingly unique engineering course will make girls' interest in the field last longer.

Four Simpson College students will research the lives of more than 600 military men who attended the first U.S. Army officer candidate school for black men at Fort Des Moines on the city's south side.

Their work is being paid for by a $15,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It's one of four newly created grants for joint projects between historic sites and universities to raise awareness of historic African-American sites. "It's really exciting because it's a br...