Supreme Court will decide on transgender rights in Virginia school case

The Supreme Court will tackle transgender rights for the first time, taking a case that will determine whether schools nationwide may force students to use restrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. Read more>>

The West Chester Area School District near Philadelphia joins a growing number of districts around the country in eliminating class rank in its high schools—a high-stakes strategy that educators believe could help some of their students get into the nation's elite colleges. Read more>>

San Diego Unified School District has changed its program for immigrant middle school and high school students who don’t speak English in a way that the district says empowers the students but critics say sets them up to fail. Read more>>

Mackenzie Ryan

Serious shortages in math, science and special education teachers have been reported in more than 40 states, and more than 30 states are seeing serious shortages for ELL teachers. The biggest shortages are in schools that serve low-income and minority students. Read more>>

Transgender students can use the restroom and locker room that corresponds to their consistently expressed gender identity. Students can access the alternate restrooms as soon as their parent or legal guardian declares a gender identity other than the one listed in other records, such as medical or birth records. Read more>>

One in 10 children in the United States - more than 7 million - are Texans. Half of kids in the Lone Star state live in poverty, despite 60 percent of them having two parents who work outside the home, a yearlong study by Children at Risk determined. Read more>>

Instead of relying on the state’s annual report card, Shelby County Schools is developing its own measurement tool based on what Memphis residents say are the most important qualities in a school. Read more>>

Students work in groups, pairs or individually to identify a problem at their school related to health and wellness. From there, they come up with a solution to the problems and decide how they would put together that solution and maintain it. Read more>>

The Charleston County School Board has unanimously rejected a proposal that would have allowed seventh- and eighth-grade students to learn pregnancy prevention techniques, including various birth control methods and effective condom use, as long they had their parents' permission. Read more>>

Supporters of Georgia’s proposed Opportunity School District say it will allow the state to push control over troubled schools down to the school level. But opponents point out that a political appointee of the governor would have czar-like authority over most consequential decisions. Read more>>

All summer, Sharolyn Miller, chief financial officer for Jackson Public Schools, struggled to fix a failing HVAC system Forest Hill High School couldn’t afford — just as the district found $600,000 for two new charter schools in the Mississippi city. Read more>>

In states both conservative and liberal, rural and urban, pre-K is receiving more support and more funding. But five states still do not provide any funding for pre-k, meaning parents must pay full tuition, rely on a scarce supply of federal subsidies or forego pre-K altogether. Read more>>

C.K. McClatchy High School is as indebted to newspapers as a school can be. Its name honors Charles Kenny McClatchy, the crusading editor of The Sacramento Bee and a founder of McClatchy publishing company. So when a journalism class was informed it would no longer be funded, an identity crisis ensued. Read more>>

The Texas district is the first in the nation to implement a software program that manages, tracks and recruits the more than 27,000 volunteers in its 228 schools. The VOLY.org program, customized for Dallas ISD by VolunteerNow, provides automated tools for potential volunteer opportunities, manages volunteer activities and allows for remote check-in and check-out. Read more>>

OpenEd and Pearson signed a new partnership to seamlessly integrate OpenEd resources within the Pearson Realize learning platform. It will allow teachers to browse OpenEd's resources and assign them to their students with just one click. Read more>>

PaySchools, the flagship education subsidiary of i3 Verticals, is teaming up with partner by EPES Software, a provider of accounting, financial and school student activity fund systems. The secure web-based system simplifies payment, collection and balancing of funds for school districts. Read more>>