....candidates should answer these five questions:

1. Fifteen percent of our nation's schools are overcrowded. As a result, teachers say they spend an inordinate amount of time policing classrooms. Do you have a plan for relieving this overcrowding?
2. How will you ensure that children attend schools that are places of teaching and learning, not violence and crime?
3. Teacher recruitment, retention and quality are suffering. ...   more...

Thanks to Barbara Cohen of Independent Thinking for tagging me for this cool Passion Quilt meme.

Directions: Find or create an image that captures what you are most passionate for kids to learn about.

Have you ever heard of the Eyak language? With the death of Marie Smith of Alaska, this aboriginal language has died. With the spread of English and suppression of native languages, more will end.

Chief Marie Smith Jones, the last fluent speaker of the Eyak language of the Alaskan Indians, died in January at her home in Anchorage. She was 89. Chief Jones worked diligently to preserve her native tongue and other indigenous Alaskan languages. She was the last person to have learned the language the traditional way, taught as a child from her parents. A tribute in the SitNews.

Her long-time ...   more...

• Reading First would be restored to $1 billion. That's the amount it received in fiscal 2007, before Congress whacked it down to $393 million.
  
• Title I grants to schools districts would increase $406 million, or 2.9 percent, to $14.3 billion.
  
• Special education grants to states ...   more...