"Lackluster crop of candidates"

A message for APS students back in school
[CL] ...Judging from the lackluster crop of candidates running for an empty seat on the school board, [interim superintendent Erroll] Davis might not get much in the way of help from the next generation of elected officials.

Read the whole thing. I don't care for the "message for the students" conceit, which comes across as too cutesy when the article is not written for elementary-age readers. But it's not wrong.

As school year starts, here's what to expect
[AJC] Districts are under pressure to improve student achievement with high test scores and graduation rates and to deal with policy changes on graduation and math.

Budget cuts and unpaid furloughs. New teacher evaluation system. "No Child Left Behind" left behind. Changing graduation requirements. Option to teach traditional 'algebra, geometry and statistics' vs integrated 'math'. It makes it sound like they're jacking up the buildings and sliding new schools under them.

Culture of testing went too far in Atlanta schools
[Kansas City Star] No public schools are immune to the pressures of state test scores. And the next district to reveal cracks could be yours.
“Whenever you have an accountability system with severe sanctions attached to it,” said Betsy Regan, who coordinates testing in the Shawnee Mission School District, “... it drives a tendency to work around the system.”

I can't decide to be annoyed or amused at the KC reader who comments "Inner cities schools have challenges suburban schools just don’t have to face." Kinda funny, now that the Georgia investigation has moved to Dougherty County. That's Albany, nobody's definition of "inner city". (I'm not sure why the reporter feels the need to mention that Dougherty is a "majority-black" system. So is Atlanta.)

Aside: Content-management software makes you name a document when you save it. This original name isn't always reflected in its eventual headline. However, it often surfaces in the article's URL. This Kansas City article, for instance, says "theyre-watching-for-cheaters.html".