EducationNews.org

The Pittsburgh Promise college scholarship program said it's willing to give a second chance to high school graduates with grade-point averages too low to meet regular eligibility requirements

City, school and civic leaders yesterday tried to forge a united front to tackle Pittsburgh's high-school dropout rate of 35 percent.

The tuition tax that Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl sees as the city's ticket out of financial distress drew mixed reviews from council members, yelps from students and parents and harsh words from some of the biggest targeted schools yesterday

A Downtown education group yesterday said the Pittsburgh Public Schools must significantly raise the achievement of black students if the district is to achieve its vision of "Excellence for All."

No one was more surprised than Northside Urban Pathways Charter School teacher Jamilla Rice to find out a school assembly was actually a ruse to present her with a $25,000 Milken Educator Award.

Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Inc. and computer legend, is described as "a rock star" at Carnegie Mellon University, especially in the School of Computer Science.

Those are the sentiments expressed by a number of suburban school officials regarding the recently released Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exam scores for math and reading.

By Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Pushing buttons runs counter to a die-hard view by some parents that math is best learned the way they were taught -- by drill and memorization alone. Some still see calculators as inevitably de-emphasizing those traditions.

Algebra is so important that the National Mathematics Advisory Council, appointed by the president, called it a "demonstrable gateway to later achievement."