Local kids with a passion for math and science have new options, thanks to a $7.8 million federal grant awarded to Albuquerque Public Schools. The money will be used to convert Mission Avenue Elementary School, Garfield Middle School and Valley High School into "Engineering for the Future" schools with hands-on science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum.
Adults have long had websites aplenty to find out more information about Louisiana's Capital city. Now kids have one of their own. It's called www.kidslovebatonrouge.com. Students in Southeast Middle's magnet program, known as DATA, short for Digital Arts & Technology Academy, led the way in filling out the website.
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, joined by administrators and staff from LEARN and schools in Groton, Norwich, New London and East Hartford, cheered on Friday afternoon the announcement of a nearly $15 million federal grant that will help create intradistrict magnet schools and bring educational programs to the region.
Jackie Barone, principal of Charlotte-Mecklenburg's Piedmont Middle School, has been named 2017 administrator of the year by the National Association for Gifted Children. "One of the most remarkable environments I have ever visited is Piedmont IB Middle School," said Sneha Shah-Coltrane, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's top official for education of gifted students.
"Our magnet and curriculum enhancement programs have been pillars of innovation for our district and have set a national standard for excellence," Superintendent Jim Merrill said in a written statement. "We continue to seek and discover ways to offer the best choices possible for our community."
The high school in Oceanside has been honored with a national certification as a demonstration magnet school - the only one in California. Mission Vista is a dual-magnet school, with programs focusing on arts and communication, and science and technology.
In 2012, a group of Magnet Schools of America's board members, and volunteers from the membership, took on the task of examining the MSA five Pillars and drafting the Standards of Excellence. Through thirty-six months of drafts and a certification pilot study with six membership districts, the final ten Standards of Excellence were presented to the organization's membership. The purpose of these standards was to drive the process and work for becoming a nationally certified magnet school. Each of the standards have several performance indicators with a rubric that allowed schools to measure their status against exemplars.
It's day six of the school year at the CREC Ana Grace Academy of the Arts Elementary Magnet School. Sue Files sits on a colorful carpet with her new kindergarten students - a couple who know just a little bit of English, some who didn't go to preschool, some who are already reading, some who are still working on their letters and numbers.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of Yale's Pathways to Science, free on-campus STEM enrichment programming for local middle and high school students hosted by Yale faculty members. "When we were beginning to form Pathways, it was like a thousand flowers, but no garden," Merson said.
The gap between the proficiency levels of black children and white children in Alabama's public schools is wide, stubborn, and pervasive. The causes for that gap are many, and the impact of that gap is long-lasting. But AL.com, after analyzing achievement gaps between black and white students, found a whole group of schools where proficiency for students is high and the gap is minimal. Those schools, by and large, are Alabama's magnet schools.
Raise the level of performance consistent throughout school districts nationwide and creates a platform from which all magnet schools can flourish. Magnet Schools of America’s national certification process is designed to recognize the hard work of the best magnet schools in the nation and to help them as they grow.
