Atlanta Public Schools may be forced to renew the contracts of 90 tenured teachers implicated in one of the nation’s largest cheating scandals because of job protection rights, the Huffington Post reports. According to state law, the 90 tenured educators — of the 120 currently on paid administrative leave for being involved in the scandal — will be given an automatic yearlong renewal of their contracts on May 15, unless the district terminates them before then, WSB-TV reports. The district, however, cannot take administrative action to fire those teachers without sufficient evidence — which is currently being held up in a criminal investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard. Howard is looking into felony indictments against the educators for altering state documents, lying to investigators and stealing government funds…
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Panel revokes teaching licenses of 11 in Atlanta
A Georgia state commission decided Thursday to revoke the teaching licenses of eight teachers and three school administrators in the Atlanta Public Schools, imposing the first sanctions in one of the nation’s largest school cheating scandals, the Associated Press reports. The Georgia Professional Standards Commission voted on the first batch of cases from a state probe released in July that revealed widespread cheating in nearly half of the district’s 100 schools dating as far back as 2001. The commission is expected by year’s end to take up the rest of the nearly 180 cases in Atlanta…
…Read More“Sleep debt” tied to attention trouble in teens
High school students who catch up on sleep over the weekend do worse on attention tests in school than kids who don’t get extra shuteye, according to a new study from South Korea, Reuters reports. Researchers say the findings suggest “sleep debt” accumulated during the week might be taxing the teens’ intellectual resources.
“It’s like a bank–they are on constant, huge sleep overdraft,” Dr. David Gozal, an expert in childhood sleep problems at the University of Chicago, told Reuters Health…