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Struggling elementary school students spend an extra year building up basic skills through the East Ramapo school district’s new Gift of Time program. For more on the program, see the NewsCenter Now segment below or read my story here. For the school district’s explanation of why GOT is different from “getting left back,” check out [...]

There are consequences to grade retention, more commonly known as “getting left back.” They’re discussed in this position paper from the National Association of School Psychologists. The paper stated that, among other things, retention was associated with increases in behavioral problems and had negative impacts on student achievement.

A reader today forwarded me a link to [...]

The “Wonderful Words of the Week” program at the East Ramapo school district is taking a hiatus for the holidays, but the words already reviewed by East Ramapo grade schoolers are still up for vocab-ophiles to see. You’ll find the grades K-3 list here and the grades 4-6 list here.

I’ve pasted my original story explaining [...]

As the U.S. population grows, so does the pool of top students applying to the nation’s top colleges. But until recently, some of the country’s elite schools (eg. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford etc.) haven’t done much to expand their student bodies, leaving more and more “astonishing applicantsâ€? facing rejection, Amherst College president Anthony W. Marx tells [...]

The brightly-painted windows that greet visitors to Tappan Zee Elementary School are the work of students from teacher Donna Schaefer’s third-grade class. Under the guidance of art teacher Tatiana DiPierno, students painted a scene from the book “Stand Tall, Molly Lou Mellon”, a story about a small girl who gets teased because of her size.

Want [...]

Bad news and Nanuet schools don’t usually go together in the same sentence. But the small, generally quiet district has been criticized publicly this week by the office of State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. In a new audit report, DiNapoli’s office cited “questionable overtime costs and overpayments” to employees of the district’s facilities department.

Over a two-year [...]

It’s 2 a.m. and your bed is looking awfully inviting. You have, after all, been cramming for that dreaded biochemistry/greek philosophy/art of walking midterm for hours and now it’s time to shutter the books and catch some shut-eye, right?

Well, actually, yes.
A new study of students at a small New York liberal arts has found that, [...]

Hey Rockland parents—got snow day plans? Whether you’re at home watching DVDs, playing with the kids in the snow or shoveling your hearts out, I want to hear about it. Give me a call at 845-578-2420 and stay warm!

What does it mean to be “ethically prepared” to join America’s workforce?

Do you have to be willing to:

A. lie.

B. cheat.

C. slug somebody.

It seems a frighteningly large number of American teenagers would answer “all of the above. ”

A new survey by Junior Achievement Worldwide and Deloitte & Touche found that while 71 percent of the teens [...]

We chat online, shop online, date online … so why not praise kids online too?

Tappan mom Susan Camus has recently launched PraiseAChild.com, a Web site “designed to give a child the valuable gift of self-esteem” through praise posted online from parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, etc. Each post costs just under a dollar.

This, of course, begs [...]

More and more colleges and high school students are going online to find each other, Diana Costello reports in a story today.

For college administrators and the college students who help them reach out to prospective applicants, blogs have emerged as a tool of the trade—take a peak at Pace University’s student blogosphere on this site.

Also, [...]

When a Garnerville family approached the Rockland Board of Cooperative Educational Services about having their daughter take a BOCES cosmetology class, they were turned away. Why? Because the girl had been home-schooled.

Read more about the issue here and check out my colleague Randi Weiner discussing it on NewsCenter Now in the segment below.

Download:

When Vice President Dick Cheney fell asleep during an important meeting, he was roundly criticized…but I’m pretty sure no one resigned over the impromptu nap.

Not so in East Ramapo, where seeing school board president Nathan Rothschild fall asleep during a public presentation so enraged one woman that she resigned her position on a district committee. [...]

Watch out Harvard, Stanford and Princeton—you may be perennial favorites on U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings, but when it comes to another ranking system, you might as well be safety schools.

Witness the 2007-2008 “Power Rankings” by CollegeHumor.com. The Web site used criterion such as “bar closing time”, “cute college girls” and “closest Taco [...]