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"I came to the conclusion ... that No Child Left Behind has turned into a timetable for the destruction of American public education," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I had never imagined that the test would someday be turned into a blunt instrument to close schools — or to say whether teachers are good teachers or not — because I always knew children's test scores are far more complicated than the way they're being received today."

"The whole purpose of federal law and state law should be to help schools improve, not to come in and close them down and say, 'We're going to start with a clean slate,' because there's no guarantee that the clean slate's going to be better than the old slate," says Ravitch. "Most of the schools that will be closed are in poor or minority communities where large numbers of children are very poor and large numbers of children don't speak English. They have high needs. They come from all kinds of difficult circumstances and they need help — they don't need their school closed."

"Regular public school parents are angry because they no longer have an art room, they no longer have a computer room — whatever space they had for extra activities gets given to the charters and then they have better facilities. They have a lot of philanthropic money behind them — Wall Street hedge fund managers have made this their favorite cause. So at least in [New York City] they are better-funded ... so they have better everything."

The country’s largest teachers’ group on Thursday visited the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency to denounce the escalating investigation of teachers over allegedly lax management of student violence on campus. The visit by the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association is expected to deepen conflict between the two parties over whether teachers bear sole responsibility for school violence that has been blamed for student suicides.

The investigation will discourage the majority of teachers who fight irregularities and seek peace on campus everyday,” Yang told reporters as he entered the SMPA building. “Every member in the school is responsible for school violence, including the teachers, the students and their parents. The teachers should not be solely blamed for the tragedy. We are here to listen to the police’s explanation.”

Yang’s visit came two days after the police launched two unprecedented investigations into teachers’ alleged neglect of bullied students. The teachers stand accused of ignoring requests from the victims and their parents for protection and not taking proper measures to cease the school violence blamed for the suicides of two middle school students in December.

ADDIS ABABA, 18 January 2012 (IRIN) - Parts of Ethiopia are still reeling from the effects of recent drought, flooding, conflict or a combination of the three, resulting in increased numbers of children dropping out of school, say officials. At least 385,000 school-children need "emergency education assistance this school year", Alexandra Westerbeek, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) communication manager in Ethiopia, told IRIN. "In addition, 70,000 children among [the] refugee population also need emergency education assistance." 

More than 80,000 English language teachers in Vietnam's state schools are expected to be confident, intermediate-level users of English, and to pass a test to prove it, as part of an ambitious initiative by the ministry of education to ensure that all young people leaving school by 2020 have a good grasp of the language.

But the initiative is worrying many teachers, who are uncertain about their future if they fail to achieve grades in tests such as Ielts and Toefl."All teachers in primary school feel very nervous," said Nguyen Thi La, 29, an English teacher at Kim Dong Primary School in Hanoi."It's difficult for teachers to pass this exam, especially those in rural provinces. B2 is a high score.""All we know is that if we pass we are OK. If we don't we can still continue teaching, then take another test, then if we fail that, we don't know."

"No teachers will be sacked if they are not qualified because we already know most of them are not qualified. No teachers will be left behind and the government will take care of them. But if the teachers don't want to improve, then parents will reject them because only qualified teachers will be able to run new training programmes."

The list included seven female ministers and created a number of new ministries including Investment and Humanitarian Affairs combined with Disasters Management.

Researchers compiled a composite index of "water threats" that includes issues such as scarcity and pollution.

Instead, they say governments should to invest in water management strategies that combine infrastructure with "natural" options such as safeguarding watersheds, wetlands and flood plains.

They have taken data on a variety of different threats, used models of threats where data is scarce, and used expert assessment to combine the various individual threats into a composite index.

Enrolment at primary schools nationwide has leapt from 59% in 2000 to 95.4% today, putting the impoverished country well on course to achieve the second millennium development goal (MDG) of primary school education for all by 2015.

half of pupils will fail to qualify for secondary school, with 3,000 girls a year dropping out due to pregnancy.

The progress has come with a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Enrolment has grown so fast in Tanzania that the school system is creaking with overcrowded classrooms, shortages of books, teachers and toilets, and reports of corporal punishment being used to keep order. In short, it seems that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.

But as President René Préval emphasized during my meeting with him, we must be thinking about tomorrow. Haiti, though desperately poor, had been making progress. It was enjoying a new stability; investors had returned. That will not be enough to rebuild the country as it was, nor is there any place for cosmetic improvements. We must help Haiti build back better, working with the government so that today's investments have lasting benefit, creating jobs and freeing Haitians from dependence on the world's generosity.

Haiti's plight is a reminder of our wider responsibilities. A decade ago, the international community began a new century by agreeing to act to eliminate extreme poverty by 2015. Great strides have been made toward some of these ambitious "millennium goals," variously targeting core sources of global poverty and obstacles to development -- from maternal health and education to managing infectious disease. Yet progress in other critical areas lags badly. We are very far from delivering on our promises of a better future for the world's poor.

UNICEF, the UN children's agency, reports that the abolition of school fees has had the intended effect of vastly increasing access to education. The number of primary students in Kenya has increased by nearly 2 million.

Encouragingly, the dropout rate, an important measurement of affordability and educational quality, has also fallen. The share of students completing primary school jumped from 62.8 per cent in 2002, the last year fees were charged, to 76.2 per cent two years later as fewer poor children were forced out for nonpayment.

the lifting of fees in Kenya and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa has proved to be a giant step forward for access to education by millions of the region's poor. It has helped Africa make progress towards its goal of finding a place in school for all its children. GA_googleFillSlot( "AllAfrica_Story_InsetB" ); var ACE_AR = {site: '768910', size: '180150'}; Over the last 15 years a number of other countries, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique, have also experienced explosive growth in primary school enrolment following the elimination of fees. The UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that between 2000 and 2007 overall primary school enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa rose by 42 per cent - the greatest rate of increase in the world. As a result, the percentage of African children in primary school increased from 58 to 74 per cent. A few African countries, including Botswana, Cape Verde, Togo and Mauritius, could achieve universal primary enrolment by 2015

More than 1.5 million people have displaced by the quake, according to local news services that quoted the director of Chile's emergency management office. In Concepción, which appeared to be especially hard hit, the mayor said Sunday morning that 100 people were trapped under the rubble of a building that had collapsed, according to Reuters.

While this earthquake was far stronger than the 7.0-magnitude one that ravaged Haiti six weeks ago, the damage and death toll in Chile are likely to be far less extensive, in part because of strict building codes put in place after devastating earthquakes.

Chileans were only just beginning to grapple with the devastation before them, even as more than two dozen significant aftershocks struck the country.

Addressing the nation to mark the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 that makes elementary education an entitlement for children in the age group of 6-14 years, Dr. Singh said the States should join in this national effort with full resolve and determination. “Our government, in partnership with the State governments will ensure that financial constraints do not hamper the implementation of the Right to Education Act. “Today, our government comes before you to redeem the pledge of giving all our children the right to education.

“I call upon all our teachers across the country to become partners in this effort. It is also incumbent upon all of us to work together to improve the working conditions of our teachers and enable them to teach with dignity, giving full expression to their talent and creativity.'' He said parents and guardians, too, had a critical role to play having been assigned school management responsibilities under the Act. The needs of every disadvantaged section of our society, particularly girls, Dalits, Adivasis and minorities must be of particular focus as the Act is implemented.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said the biggest challenge to the implementation of the Act would be lack of infrastructure and teachers. Bringing children from the disadvantaged sections into the net would also be challenging, he said.