The Education Blog

The Senate Education Committee will hear testimony today about whether schools should be allowed hold father-daughter dances.

The hearing comes after controversy in Cranston over a single mother who said her daughter was denied access to a dance. She wrote to the district charging the policy violates anti-discrimination laws. Cranston school officials responded by banning father-daughter dances, prompting community outcry.

One of the nation’s most selective conservatories for the performing arts is now offering online classes for elementary and secondary students. The initiative, dubbed “Juilliard eLearning,” includes hands-on music instruction and demonstrations from Juilliard faculty and students.

NECAP, the standardized test that’s become a requirement for high school graduation in Rhode Island, may be harder than most people think. A majority of adults who took a portion of the math test last weekend failed to make the grade.

The results of a mock standardized test given to politicians and community leaders will be released Tuesday afternoon.  The math test was administered Saturday by a student group which opposes the test known as NECAP or the New England Common Assessment Program.

The chairwoman of the state Board of Education is blasting the adult test takers for participating in what she calls a “publicity stunt.”  Eva Marie Mancuso says if the adults had a hard time with it it’s because they weren’t prepared, as students are.

The University of Rhode Island says it’s seeing a record number of applications for the Fall 2013 semester.  University officials believe their marketing efforts are paying off.

Close to 21,000 students have applied for admission to URI for next fall.  Roughly 75 percent will be admitted so that the university has its desired freshman class of 3,100 even after students who have been admitted decide to go elsewhere.

URI Admissions Dean Cynthia Bonn believes the interest in attending URI is a direct result of their outreach efforts.

The New England Institute of Technology (NEIT) is one of the best places in the country to study video game design, according to the Princeton Review. The college and university ranking organization has placed NEIT at number 14 on its list of the top 15 undergraduate institutions for video game design.

The ranking puts NEIT in the company of schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which earned the number two slot, and the University of Southern California, ranked 5th. The top-ranked school for video gaming programs was the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

A group of Providence students is asking prominent Rhode Islanders to take the standardized test known as the NECAP this weekend, as they work to demonstrate why it should not be used as a graduation requirement.

"We hope to lend a deeper perspective to debate about the new high stakes testing graduation requirement," says 16-year-old Classical High School student Cauldierre McKay, a member of the Providence Student Union. The group has been pushing state officials to reconsider their policy on graduation requirements that go into effect for the class of 2014.

Brown University kicks off a lecture series on gun violence today with a talk from Carl Bogus, professor of law at Roger Williams University Law School. Bogus will discuss efforts to reduce crime and the effects guns and gun crime have on communities.

We continue our series on aging in Rhode Island with a look at the fastest growing student group at Rhode Island College and the University of Rhode Island: students 50 and older.

RIPR Education Reporter Elisabeth Harrison takes us to the RIC campus to find out why these students are returning to college, and what challenges they face when they get there.