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Calif. broadens transgender students' rights
California has become the first state in the nation to allow transgendered students to choose which school bathrooms and locker rooms to use and which sport teams to join based on their gender identity.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill No. 1266 into law Monday. The law will go in to effect January 1.
The law is the nation's first that specifically requires equal access to public school facilities and activities based on gender identity, though some states have general policies to the same effect, said Shannon Price Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights - one of several groups backing the legislation.
FULL STORYTainted school lunch kills 22 kids
At least 22 schoolchildren died in northeastern India after eating free school lunches that contained a poison, a state official said.
More than 25 others have been hospitalized in Bihar state, said Education Minister P.K. Shahi, after ingesting an insecticide that was in the food.
The poison was organophosphorous, a chemical that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is commonly used in agriculture.
FULL STORYN.C. A&T locked down after armed-person report
North Carolina A&T State University's campus in Greensboro was locked down Friday morning after school police received a report of a person with a weapon on campus, the school said on its website and its Twitter account.
No shots have been fired and no injuries have been reported, according to a school representative.
FULL STORYAtlanta schools' ex-chief surrenders
Beverly Hall, the former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, was among the educators who surrendered to authorities Tuesday after being indicted by a grand jury in a cheating scandal that rocked the district and drew national attention.
Hall resigned from her position in 2011 after a state investigation into large, unexplained test score gains in some Atlanta schools.
She has denied any role in the cheating scandal.
FULL STORY35 indicted in Atlanta cheating scandal
Thirty-five Atlanta Public Schools educators and administrators were indicted Friday on a myriad of charges in connection with alleged cheating in standardized testing, one of the largest cheating scandals to hit the nation's public education system.
Among those indicted by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury was Beverly Hall, the former schools superintendent who gained national recognition in 2009 for turning around Atlanta's school system.
There were 65 counts in the indictment, which included charges of racketeering, influencing a witness, theft by taking and making false statements or writings.
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Indiana school vouchers upheld
In a ruling that could reverberate nationwide, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the state's voucher program, which gives poor and middle class families public funds to help pay for private school tuition, including religious schools.
Indiana has the broadest school voucher program available to a range of incomes, critics say, and could set a precedent as other states seek ways to expand such programs.
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Months after shooting, Malala at school
For the first time since the Taliban shot her five months ago, Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai has done what made her a target of the would-be assassins: She's gone to school.
The 15-year-old on Tuesday attended Edgbaston High School in Birmingham, England, the city in which doctors treated her after she received initial care in Pakistan, a public relations agency working with her announced.
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New Orleans teacher vanishes without trace
Terrilynn Monette had no problem uprooting her life to help children.
When the California native learned of the "teachNOLA" program, which sends educators to New Orleans to teach in impoverished areas, she packed her bags and headed to Louisiana.
"I always wanted to be a teacher, and what better place to teach than New Orleans, where passionate teachers are needed most?" Monette said in a 2011 video.
Her dedication and excellence in the classroom earned her a "Teacher of the Year" nomination in her district.
But after a night celebrating the accolade with friends, the 26-year-old vanished.
FULL STORYSouth Dakota to let schools arm teachers
School boards in South Dakota will be permitted to let school employees, hired security personnel or volunteers carry guns in schools under a law signed Friday by Gov. Dennis Daugaard.
The law, set to go into effect July 1, will let school boards establish "school sentinel" programs.
Under these programs, the school boards can arm people "to secure or enhance the deterrence of physical threat and defense of the school, its students, its staff, and members of the public on the school premises against violent attack," according to the legislation.
Parents: Bullying led to boy's death
Bailey O'Neill's parents just wanted him to see his 12th birthday.
The next day, they took him off life support.
The fatal injuries that led to Bailey's death Sunday were the tragic consequences of bullying at school, his parents say.
But Philadelphia-area detectives are still investigating whether the incident was, in fact, bullying or an altercation on the playground.
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German education minister loses Ph.D. over plagiarized thesis
Her doctoral thesis dealt with how we form our conscience. Turns out she plagiarized chunks of it.
A university stripped Germany's education minister of her Ph.D. on Tuesday, after a blogger caught the plagiarism and spent months vigilantly presenting the evidence to the public.
Annette Schavan is the second minister in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet who has this embarrassing distinction.
Former defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg stepped down in May 2011, after large passages of his dissertation were found to have been directly copied from other sources.
At the time, Schavan sharply criticized Guttenberg publicly for his shortcomings, according to German media reports.
FULL STORYYuma students released following report of gun, lockdown
[Posted at 7:14 p.m. ET] No gun was found, no injuries were reported and no arrests were made after police were told of a possible sighting of a student with a gun at a Yuma, Arizona, elementary school, CNN affiliate KYMA reported.
Two elementary schools and some preschools were put on lockdown Tuesday morning because of the possible sighting. Students were sent home by the afternoon, though some of them were first bused to a Yuma elementary school that hadn't been locked down, KYMA reported.
[Posted at 1:51 p.m. ET] Three schools in the Yuma, Arizona, area have been put on lockdown as a precautionary measure because of a possible sighting of a student with a gun, the Yuma Police Department said.
Officers are investigating reports that a student might have been seen with a gun this morning at Yuma's Rancho Viejo Elementary School, police said.
That school, plus nearby Salida Del Sol Elementary School and a preschool, have been locked down, according to the department.
Harvard students forced to withdraw amid cheating scandal
More than half of the students implicated in last year's cheating scandal at Harvard University have been required to withdraw from school for a period of time, a dean said in a statement Friday on behalf of the school.
More than a hundred students were investigated for plagiarism or for having "inappropriately collaborated" on a course's take-home, open-book spring final exam, said Michael D. Smith, Harvard's dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Many of those who were not forced to withdraw face disciplinary probation at the Ivy League institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the remaining were cleared.
The school would not release the specific breakdown of the numbers of affected students.
Schools must provide sports for students with disabilities, feds say
Schools must give students with disabilities equal opportunities to participate in extracurricular athletics, including varsity sports, the U.S. Department of Education said today. And if existing sports don't meet the needs of those students, schools must create additional athletic programs.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights pointed to a 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office that said disabled students were not getting equal opportunities to participate in sports, a right they were granted under the Rehabilitation Act, passed in 1973.
For more on this story, read CNN's Schools of Thought blog.
2nd suspect charged in Texas college shooting
A second suspect has been charged and arrested in connection with the shooting at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas.
According to Harris County Sheriff's Office, Trey Foster, 22, was arrested early Friday morning in Plano, Texas. He has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Three people, including a maintenance man who was accidentally shot and two people who were fighting each other, were injured during fight at Lone Star College campus in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday, officials say.
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Police: Teen shot 1 classmate, missed another in California high school
- Student, 16, walked into class late and fired at two classmates with 12-gauge shotgun, critically wounding one and missing the other at Taft (California) Union High School on Thursday morning, police say
- Teacher was struck in head with pellet, but is OK, sheriff says
- Police: Suspect put gun down after teacher and "campus supervisor" talked to him; wounded student airlifted to hospital
- Below are the latest updates as they come to us. Also, you can read our full story.
[Updated at 7:09 p.m. ET] An armed police officer is assigned to the school but he wasn't at the school at the time of the shooting because snowfall in the area prevented his arrival, authorities said.
[Updated at 7:03 p.m. ET] A mother of a student witness recalls the moment that her daughter called her after the shooting: "She was telling me, 'Mom, get here, there’s blood everywhere," the woman CNN affiliate KERO.
[Updated at 5:55 p.m. ET] Here's more quotes from Kern County Sheriff Don Youngblood, from the news conference earlier this afternoon, about the teacher and the campus supervisor who apparently talked the suspect into dropping his weapon:
“When (the teacher) started a dialogue, the shotgun, he said, was pointed in several different directions. He is unsure how many rounds were fired … . He said as the dialogue started with him and the campus supervisor, who was just outside the room, the student was still armed with the shotgun. They, I think, probably distracted him in a conversation, allowing students to get out of the classroom and ultimately talking the student down.”
Youngblood added: "To stand there and face someone that has a shotgun - who has already discharged it and shot a student - speaks volumes for these two young men, and what they may have prevented. They could have just as easily tried to get out of the classroom and left students, and they didn't. They knew not to let him leave that classroom with that shotgun, and they took that responsibility on very serious, and we're very proud of the job they did."
The school district's superintendent told reporters that the school's staff had just reviewed lockdown procedures earlier Thursday morning.
[Updated at 5:42 p.m. ET] The news conference ended more than an hour ago, but we wanted to give you some longer quotes from officials about how a teacher and a "campus supervisor" - a campus monitor on the school's staff - talked to the suspect until, authorities say, the suspect put down the weapon.
After the suspect shot one student and missed another, "the teacher at that point was trying to get the students out of the classroom and engaged the shooter - who had numerous rounds of shotgun shells … in his pockets - engaged the suspect in conversation," Kern County Sheriff Don Youngblood said.
“A campus supervisor showed up, was outside the classroom, and together they engaged in conversation with this young man, and at one point he put the shotgun down, and police officers were able to take him into custody,” Youngblood said.
Here's what Taft Police Chief Ed Whiting said about the teacher and the campus supervisor:
"We want to really commend the teacher and a campus supervisor for all they did to bring this to a very quick resolution before anybody else was harmed. ... They did a great job in protecting the kids, and we can't thank them enough for what they did today."
U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, whose district includes Taft, also praised the teacher.
"I first want to commend the teacher. I think he saved many lives today. His actions, his time, his ability of what he did (to) protect the students there," McCarthy said.
McCarthy also praised law enforcement for responding quickly. Youngblood said Taft police officers were at the school within 60 seconds of a 911 call.
Boys make the right move with loaded gun in theater
With the horrific news involving guns from Newtown, Connecticut, in the past week, here’s a story with a happy ending and one that illustrates how kids can be more responsible than adults when it comes to weapons.
Chicago teachers vote to suspend strike
[Updated at 6:43 p.m. ET] Delegates for striking Chicago Public Schools teachers voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to suspend their nine-day strike, meaning classes will resume Wednesday, according to delegates who attended a union meeting.
About 800 delegates from the teachers union gathered at midafternoon to vote on whether to suspend the walkout, which began September 10.
The vote came a day after school officials asked a judge to declare the strike illegal and order the teachers back to work. A Cook County judge had scheduled a hearing on that request Wednesday.
Any contract agreement with the school system would need to be ratified by the more than 29,000 members of the union. The strike has kept about 350,000 students out of class for seven school days.
Teachers walked off the job September 10, objecting to a longer school day, evaluations tied to student performance and job losses from school closings.
FULL STORYChicago schools go to court to end strike
Chicago school officials sought a court order to end the teacher strike that entered its sixth school day on Monday.
The move comes after teachers union representatives decided Sunday not to end a week-long walkout - despite a tentative contract deal reached by union leaders and school officials.
The move left Mayor Rahm Emanuel vowing to go to court to force teachers back to work, calling Sunday's actions by the union "a delay of choice that is wrong for our children."
Emanuel contended Sunday that the strike is illegal because "it is over issues that are deemed by state law to be nonstrikable, and it endangers the health and safety of our children."
FULL STORYSource: Tentative deal reached in Chicago teachers' strike
A tentative deal has been reached in the dispute between the Chicago Teachers Union and the city's school board, a source with detailed knowledge of the negotiations said Friday.
Students - who've been out of school since teachers began striking Monday - will be back in the classroom on Monday, according to the source.
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