By BYRON TAU of Politico - January 25, 2012

President Obama's 2012 State of the Union address again rated at an 8th grade comprehension level on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test — the third lowest score of any State of the Union address since 1934. The University of Minnesota's Smart Politics conducted an analysis on the last 70 State of the Union addresses and found that President Obama's three addresses have the lowest grade average of any modern president. "Obama's average grade-level score of 8.4 is more than two grades lower than the 10.7 grade average for the other 67 addresses written by his 12 predecessors," they conclude.

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By Daniel Ikaika Ito ESPN Action Sports - October 4, 2011

HONOLULU -- Hawaii, the birthplace of wave riding, became the first state in the nation to officially recognize surfing as a high school sport on Monday.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie, Lt. Gov. Brian Shatz, Department of Education superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi and Board of Education member Keith Amemiya announced in Waikiki the state's commitment to make surfing a high school sport by the spring of 2013.

"We wanted to get the entire administration team together to show that we're in total support," Abercrombie said. "Surfing is the official sport of the state of Hawaii, but we haven't been able to put together the necessary protocols in the schools until now. One of the advantages of the new school board is the new sense of cooperation."

The administration team invited Oahu's Carissa Moore, 18, who was recently crowned the Association of Surfing Professionals women's world champion, to the ceremony. She is the youngest ASP world champion and graduated in 2010 from Punahou School, a private school that also boasts President Barack Obama as an alumnus. Although Moore doesn't directly benefit from this historical recognition, she still realizes that this is a great opportunity for Hawaii's youth. 

More from ESPN

WASHINGTON (AP) - September 23, 2011 (WPVI) -- President Barack Obama is giving states the flexibility to opt out of provisions of the No Child Left Behind law, a move he says is designed to energize schools but Republicans challenge as outside his authority.

The law, a Bush-era education initiative passed with bipartisan support, has grown increasingly unpopular as more schools risk being labeled a failure.

Under the plan Obama was to outline Friday, states would be allowed to ask the Education Department to be exempted from some of the law's requirements if they meet certain conditions. That includes enacting standards to prepare students for college and careers and setting evaluation standards for teachers and principals. Click here for the rest of the story from the AP

EL PASO-- The information of hundreds of students could now be in the wrong hands after an online hack group has said they hacked into the El Paso Independent School District's database and took important information.

Click for more from NewsChannel 9 in El Paso

August 29, 2011

We've all heard the theory that some students are visual learners, while others are auditory learners. And still other kids learn best when lessons involve movement.

But should teachers target instruction based on perceptions of students' strengths? Several psychologists say education could use some "evidence-based" teaching techniques, not unlike the way doctors try to use "evidence-based medicine."

Psychologist Dan Willingham at the University of Virginia, who studies how our brains learn, says teachers should not tailor instruction to different kinds of learners. He says we're on more equal footing than we may think when it comes to how our brains learn. And it's a mistake to assume students will respond and remember information better depending on how it's presented.

Click here for the story from NPR

Good news for us Firefox users who, according to the London Telegraph, "... (have) the smallest percentage of low-IQ users, and the largest of average or high-IQ users."