Education News

DALLAS - The nation's largest steroids testing program caught only two Texas high school athletes taking unauthorized substances out of more than 10,000 students who were tested, according to results issued Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sallie Mae , the largest U.S. student loan company, said on Wednesday second-quarter net income fell 72 percent, hurt by restructuring expenses, but results were better than analysts had expected.

NEW YORK - Student lender SLM Corp., more commonly known as Sallie Mae, said Wednesday its second-quarter profit plunged 72 percent as funding costs remained high amid further weakening in the credit markets and the company took charges related to its restructuring.

PITTSBURGH - Dozens of the best high school musical actors and actresses from around the country will compete on Broadway next year for a new national award named after theater owner and producer James M. Nederlander.

HELOTES, Texas - A San Antonio-area school district has debuted new classic-yellow school buses that officials say are the first in the nation manufactured to run on propane.

July 21 (Bloomberg) -- When George W. Bush became president in 2001, his main goals included restoring ``honor and dignity to the White House'' after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, raising school-test scores and figuring out how to spend a record budget surplus.

BURLINGTON, Vt. - A man was convicted of murder Thursday for a shooting rampage that killed a teacher in an elementary school and his ex-girlfriend's mother.

CINCINNATI - John McCain told the NAACP and some skeptical black voters Wednesday that he will expand education opportunities, partly through vouchers for low-income children to attend private school.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - A 16-year-old who pleaded guilty last month to planning a Columbine-style attack at a northern Indiana high school told a judge Tuesday that he never intended to carry out the plot.

During the past two school years, teacher Julia Keyse had to enforce an unusual rule in her kindergarten and first-grade classroom: No interrupting while she pricked Caylee's finger to check her blood sugar and adjusted her insulin pump.

The National Association of School Nurses calculates the nurse-to-student ratio for each state. Federal guidelines recommend that schools employ one nurse for every 750 students, but the national average is one nurse for every 1,151 students.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As parents usher their children back to school this fall, they may have one more challenge to deal with: how to get their kids to school.

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - A persistently high rate of unemployment is the weakest point in South Africa's post-apartheid economy, with the education system failing to produce skilled workers, the OECD said on Tuesday.

From coast to coast, tough financial conditions are forcing school districts and nonprofit groups to cut back on summer programs that are widely viewed as invaluable to both struggling and superior students.

WASHINGTON - An education-advocacy group will begin airing ads this week seeking to nudge Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama on ways to improve the standing of U.S. schools compared with other industrialized nations.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Arizona school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old student by conducting a strip search for ibuprofen, a divided U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday.

WASHINGTON - Add schools to the list of places hit hard by rising food prices.

(Reuters) - The Student Loan Corp, a unit of Citigroup Inc's Citibank N.A., said it will cut 174 jobs to reduce costs in a difficult student lending environment.

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain intends to talk about how teachers are paid and tutoring for poor kids when he goes before the NAACP convention next week.

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) - From online courses to kid-friendly laptops and virtual teachers, technology is spreading in America's classrooms, reducing the need for textbooks, notepads, paper and in some cases even the schools themselves.

RICHMOND, Va. - Prospective and current graduate business students who used a Web site to cheat on entrance examinations over the last five years could have their scores thrown out.

Changes in the federal student aid program that took effect Tuesday will lessen interest rates for some students while increasing the amount they can borrow.

WASHINGTON - Six states are getting the OK to write their own prescriptions for ailing schools under the Bush administration's signature education law.

WASHINGTON - It's not much of a report card.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The steel fence that the U.S. government wants to build along the Mexican border would do more than slice through the University of Texas' Brownsville campus and cut off the golf course from the rest of the school.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nintendo is banned everywhere but the classroom at Tokyo Joshi Gakuen school in Japan as the ubiquitous DS consoles become the latest tool in English instruction.

BOSTON - A program that gained national attention in 1991 for offering to pay college tuition for 69 second-graders is closing its doors in Cambridge on Friday.

The 92-6 roll call by which the Senate on Thursday passed a bill to pay for war operations, boost college aid for troops, extend unemployment benefits and provide emergency flood relief.

TOKYO - The Nintendo DS isn't just fun and games anymore for English students at Tokyo's Joshi Gakuen all-girls junior high school. The portable video game console is now being used as a key teaching tool, breaking with traditional Japanese academic methods.