The Daily Report Card: More Cursive, Off-Campus Bullying, And Misplaced Millions

In The Classroom Today

Study Finds Only 13 State Laws Address Off-Campus Bullying – State EdWatch – Education Week Just 13 states give schools the ability to intervene when behavior off campus creates a hostile environment at school, a new review of state bullying laws by the federal Department of Education. Dealing with off-campus issues that end up surfacing at school has been a challenge for schools, although they have been warned by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights that if they don’t act in cases of suspected bullying, they could be violating students’ civil rights. A letter last year says “a school is responsible for addressing harassment incidents about which it knows or reasonably should have known.” (blogs.edweek.org)

Read between the lines, Statehouse: cursive is old school – Opinion – Indiana Statesman – Indiana State University Attention, everyone:  I have tragic news.  The Indiana Department of Education will no longer require cursive writing to be taught in all Indiana schools, starting next fall.   Wait, what?  You don’t care about kids not learning to write in cursive?  Hey, me neither.  Other than signing my name, I can’t even remember the last time I needed to write in cursive.  My textbooks aren’t written in cursive.  Assignments handed out by professors aren’t written in cursive.  I’m willing to believe this trend of not seeing things in cursive extends to the workplace too. (Indiana Statesman)

Indiana finds misplaced $300 million – Associated Press – POLITICO.com Indiana’s governor announced Tuesday that state officials have found $300 million that went untouched even as lawmakers made deep cuts to education and slashed vacant government jobs while it weathered the recession. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said the money was collected but never transferred to the state’s general spending account, which lawmakers use to allocate funds to various programs and departments. (politico.com)