EducationNews.org

By Phillip Rawls
Alabama legislators expect to make deep cuts in education spending for the next school year, but an Associated Press survey of lawmakers found sharp differences between the House and Senate about how to do it.

By Kent Faulk
A new policy aimed at keeping illegal immigrants from enrolling in Alabama two-year colleges has required extra paperwork and training for campus admission officials and given a little headache to at least a few prospective students.

That could mean adding more city schools to the list of 11 scheduled to close over the next three years, Interim Superintendent Barbara Allen said, especially in light of Gov. Bob Riley's recent announcement that the state education budget will be slashed by 9 percent.

They e-mail faculty with overly personal messages from accounts with addresses including "hot" or "cutie." They send messages so truncated and that do such violence against grammar as to be indecipherable.

Alabama, a perennial cellar-dweller in national education rankings, is one of just six states to meet all 10 goals in a national project to collect and monitor data on student achievement, officials announced.

An across-the-board reduction in state education spending has school officials across metro Birmingham scrambling to make midyear cuts, dipping into their reserves and finding ways to prepare for an even bleaker financial situation in the next fiscal year.

These days, it involves a rigorous curriculum. Students report to school all day, are taught five subjects, use computers and learn how to read books and write sentences. In many ways, kindergarten is the new first grade.

MONTGOMERY - The Alabama State Board of Education on Thursday accepted the resignation of John A. Johnson, longtime president of Alabama Southern Community College in Monroeville.

Alabama School Superintendent Joe Morton has been through 11 proration periods, and he believes there's more at stake than ever in the one he predicts will be declared by mid-December.