On a 5-3 vote the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed Monday to let certain faculty and students bring loaded weapons onto university and community college campuses.

Each time the University of Arizona has boosted tuition in recent years, it has boosted financial aid to try to keep a college education affordable. Until now.

Education groups are vowing to appeal their loss in a court battle over school funding.

Careful what you wish for . . . John Huppenthal got a taste of his own medicine as he moved across Jefferson Street from the state Senate to the Department of Education.

Arizona lawmakers are tackling the issue of bullying in schools, but they’re doing it in three very different ways.

California’s recession and education cuts are stressing students to the breaking point, with many reporting that they can no longer afford college and that attaining a degree will take them years longer than planned.

The California State University system has sufficient funds to admit 30,000 more students this spring than it enrolled last fall – but it will be impossible for the 23-campus system to enroll that many, CSU officials say.

A state budget that avoids additional taxes to close California’s $25.4 billion deficit could require larger elementary school class sizes, increased tuition for college and university students and a deep shakeup for local law enforcement, courts and prisons.

Students applying to jam-packed California State University don’t always get into their campus of choice, but they’ve always been able to count on priority admission to their local CSU.

Classrooms packed with more students.

The state Board of Education ordered new rules last week to clarify how charter schools are granted statewide operating privileges.

School districts and public colleges are bracing for what are expected to be deep cuts in K-12 and higher education to be announced Tuesday as Gov. John Hickenlooper unveils his first set of budget recommendations.

State lawmakers and child care advocates are proposing creation of a new state agency to fix what they call a confusing, expensive and burdensome hodgepodge of preschool and child care programs.

State Rep. Linda Schofield believes, admirably, that budget-cutting begins at home.

Days after Gov. Dannel P. Malloy promised to maintain state funding of local schools at current levels, the governor offered municipalities another glimmer of fiscal hope: the possibility of cutting their own education spending if student populations decline.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will propose sweeping changes Wednesday in the state’s school construction program — reducing reimbursements for magnet schools and new public schools.

During his campaign for governor, Dannel P. Malloy pledged not to cut state school aid when federal economic stimulus money, now being used to buoy the state’s education cost-sharing program, runs out in 2012.

A University of Connecticut benefactor who last month wrote a scathing letter demanding the return of $3 million in donations and the removal of his name from the football team’s facilities building has settled his differences with the school.

Florida’s lawmakers were starstruck. Before them stood Michelle Rhee, the former Washington D.C. public schools chancellor recently featured on Oprah, on a Newsweek cover and in the documentary film Waiting for Superman.

Georgia parents with children attending a poor-performing school could replace the school’s staff, convert the school to a charter school, or close it all together, if a bill introduced in the Ga. Legislature is approved.

Dozens of parents, teachers and community members crowded into a Board of Education meeting room yesterday to speak out against closing three small Honolulu schools, some saying that shuttering the campuses would be unfair given a recent decision to spare two Hawaii Kai schools.

State lawmakers, in a feverish search for funding to close the $844 million budgetary hole, are considering repealing 138 revolving and special funds set up for purposes ranging from University of Hawaii student activities to driver education.

A Republican state senator compared Iowa’s state-funded preschool program to Nazi indoctrination Monday, leading to a heated response from Democrats.

Gov. Terry Branstad on Monday pitched a new approach to state-supported preschool that would ease the burden on Iowa taxpayers and force families to pick up part of the tab.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s preschool proposal would require middle-class families to pay up to $1,200 a year, according to details released Monday.

A plan to offer more intensive assistance to blind Iowans in their home communities could result in the elimination of 18 jobs at the Braille school in Vinton.

Fifty employees of Grant Woods Area Education Agency have been told they’ll be laid off in June.

The funding and policy control of Iowa schools are slated to get significant attention in the state Legislature this week.

Iowa schools usually compete for basketball titles and top test scores this time of year. Now they’re battling each other for students, too.

A $43 million preschool program that will offer scholarships to low-income families but require all parents to pay something if they enroll their children in public or private schools will be unveiled today by Gov. Terry Branstad.

A retooled version of Idaho Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna’s school reform plan was introduced Monday, but there was no change in the most controversial provision: Raising class sizes and cutting hundreds of teaching jobs.

Idaho State University’s new head football coach Mike Kramer will earn a $135,000 yearly base salary, under a proposed contract.

Schools and Medicaid would see the biggest fiscal year 2012 cuts, according to a proposal for Idaho agencies to prepare for spending reductions of up to 5 percent.

As Idaho’s cash-strapped school districts scour for creative ways to make ends meet, state lawmakers are looking to help them out.

CARBONDALE, Ill. — Unions negotiating new contracts with Southern Illinois University Carbondale rallied Monday near Anthony Hall before delivering Chancellor Rita Cheng a large Valentine’s Day card professing their love for SIU.

SOUTH BELOIT, Ill. — The South Beloit School District is preparing to cut between $350,000 and $500,000 from next year’s budget on account of delinquent state money.

An Illinois senator is proposing giving the governor the authority to appoint an inspector general to probe waste, fraud and abuse at state’s universities — including to determine whether some employees are paid too much.

As many as 50,000 home-schooled children would have to be registered with the state for the first time under newly proposed legislation that is drawing fire from parents who teach their children themselves and from social conservatives.

For months, Illinois education officials have courted private support for public education reforms that would test every kindergartner and revamp how teenagers study science and technology.

As with almost all education reform efforts, the fiery rhetoric used to attack legislation that would create a private school voucher system in Indiana far outstrips the likely consequences of the proposal.

Home-schooled students and those at non-accredited private schools could participate in athletics at their local high schools under legislation the Indiana House passed Monday.

Charter schools could lease or purchase unused public school buildings for $1 under a bill that cleared the Indiana Senate in a 43-7 vote Monday.

With much fanfare, Indiana’s State Board of Education approved rules last week that require students to pass a new third-grade reading test before they can pass into fourth grade. Or did it?

Children of Indiana’s disabled military veterans would no longer be guaranteed a full college scholarship under changes moving through the Legislature.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — A bill allowing “choice scholarships” — commonly called vouchers — for low-income students to attend nonpublic schools has split local education officials.

Schools would receive 15 percent of the assets police seize from criminals, and the rest would go to law enforcement agencies, under a proposed forfeiture law a Senate committee approved Friday.

Michelle Trouvé wants to pay more taxes to support her local schools. The state of Kansas won’t let her, and the resulting standoff has pit parents in affluent districts against those in the state’s poorer towns.

A bill to abolish the Kansas Board of Regents and State Board of Education and allow the governor to appoint a secretary of education has been drafted for the Legislature but isn’t getting much traction.

For the past two years, Warren County Public Schools has participated in a statewide pilot project that overhauls the way educators teach mathematics.

Following a five-year stretch starting in 2003 in which per-pupil spending in Louisiana grew faster than anywhere else in the South — 55 percent versus a Southern regional average of 30.7 percent — state support for colleges and universities has plummeted in the past two years. And the bottom is yet to come.

Baltimore city school officials are encouraging as many as 750 of the city’s most experienced teachers to retire by April — a measure that school officials say will help mitigate budget shortfalls and prevent potential layoffs as the system girds for an expected reduction in teaching positions next year.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.73 trillion 2012 budget that would boost spending in Michigan on items like education and energy, while cutting things like heating assistance for the poor and Great Lakes cleanup in an effort to bring the federal deficit under control.

Gov. Rick Snyder promises he’ll propose his blueprint for education in April, and yet some lawmakers are clamoring to beat him to the punch with their own ideas for school reform.

Standards are everything in education. And for years, Michigan has played games with educational standards that have made them less meaningful, and even outright deceptive.

A judge on Friday ordered Robert Bobb to give up academic control of the Detroit Public Schools, but his ongoing dispute with the local school board may not be over.

Robert Bobb has to keep his nose out of academics, but he’ll keep a presence in the Detroit Public Schools through June.

As Missouri braces to lose a congressional seat, state lawmakers are forced to consider changing the current makeup of the UM System Board of Curators.

Missouri lawmakers touted legislation Monday that was designed to help prevent school children from being bullied.

Proposed legislation that would require universities to get permission from the state before issuing revenue bonds could become a power struggle if passed.

Skies are clear and snow has stopped falling across most of the state, but now Missouri school districts are trying to figure out how to reschedule days lost to the winter storm that swept through the state several weeks ago.

The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled that former Kansas City superintendent Bernard Taylor can’t be sued over a stabbing of a high school student.

It’s a creative fundraising strategy that reflects the push toward grabbing private dollars.

A pair of bills to offer tax breaks to parents of children attending private schools drew praise from some parents who wanted more options for their children and came under attack as unconstitutional from public school advocates.

Gov. Bev Perdue called for cutting the corporate tax rate and revived a 2008 campaign promise to give every student who qualifies two years of community college for free during an address to the General Assembly Monday night.

Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue on Monday night proposed cutting the corporate income tax, stealing some of the political thunder from the new Republican legislature.

State Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf will make what his office is describing as a major address Wednesday on public school teacher effectiveness and tenure reform.

Spin is a wonderful thing, a lie in a suit and tie with clean fingernails. Try this: High school students in New Jersey’s most economically depressed school districts — including cities like Newark, Paterson and Camden — outscored comparable students in the charter schools touted by Gov. Chris Christie as “miracle” solutions to urban education problems.

State Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne began hearing testimony today about whether Gov. Chris Christie was within his constitutional rights last year when he cut aid to local schools by about $1 billion.

School budget cuts made in the wake of last year’s $820 million reduction in state aid may have affected some students’ ability to meet the state’s education standards, Piscataway Schools Superintendent Robert Copeland testified in state Superior Court this morning, as the state’s Abbott V. Burke school funding case returned to court.

Gov. Chris Christie today will announce approval of $584 million for the construction or renovation of 10 schools through the Schools Development Authority, according to an administration official.

A judge says state attorneys can introduce evidence about New Jersey’s fiscal woes during an upcoming hearing on whether the state is adequately funding schools.

When Gov. Chris Christie went to war with the teachers union last year, leaders of unions representing New Jersey state workers nervously watched in the wings.

New Mexico school administrators and a teachers union are upset over a decision by the state’s new education secretary-designate to hire out-of-state consultants.

State spending on public schools would be cut by more than 1 percent next year under a budget proposal approved by a House committee Monday.

Gov. Susana Martinez wants to assign grades from A to F to rate New Mexico’s public schools and reward those that are high-performing.

The curriculums of Nevada’s community colleges and universities must be revamped to provide students the skills they need to secure high-paying technology jobs, Gov. Brian Sandoval said Monday.

Did you hear the one about the state’s higher education system suffering a 42 percent budget cut? It’s true.

It is an annual tradition on the day the governor unveils his budget. Flipping page after page of stapled booklets collated by the state’s Education Department, lawmakers search through tiny print for a series of magic numbers. They are looking at how their school districts fared, and even in the rosiest of fiscal years, the ensuing legislative debate about school aid tends to be fierce.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo received rave reviews for his job performance and cost-cutting budget in a poll Monday of New Yorkers, but special-interest groups battled at the state Capitol over his plans to reduce school aid and impose a property-tax cap.

In recent weeks, thousands of New York families have been told they no longer qualify for the popular School Tax Relief program. Many of them are about to learn they were the victims of a programming error by state tax officials.

Like Olympic runners, Ohio’s education officials had to leap all sorts of hurdles to bring back the gold — $400 million in competitive Race to the Top funds to reform education and improve student achievement, particularly in lower-achieving schools.

Ohio State and Miami officials dismissed a report issued yesterday that accuses their universities of discriminating against white students by favoring black applicants.

An appointee to the Ohio Board of Education caught up in an apparent paperwork snafu and change of administration filed suit in federal court yesterday in an attempt to keep her seat.

On Friday, Ohio State University trustees decided that individual colleges and departments within OSU will be permitted to offer early-retirement incentives and buyout packages to faculty.

In the two years since Congress made the federal government’s largest one-time investment in public schools, change has begun to ripple through classrooms from coast to coast.

Ohio students, especially those who are challenged by poverty, need plenty of time in the classroom each year — probably more than they spend now.

Gov. John Kasich’s appointment of Robert Sommers, a former charter school executive with a background in vocational education, to lead his Office of 21st Century Education is certainly a sign of the warm reception charter schools will receive in the governor’s office after the cold shoulder of the past four years.

Gov. John Kasich’s new education adviser will work on a “parallel track” with state schools Superintendent Deborah Delisle, according to a spokesman for the governor.

Ohio State University has added a new twist to offering buyouts to faculty and staff.

A lot is riding on the $400 million that Ohio won last August in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition.

With years of experience assisting school boards in negotiating teacher contracts, Van Keating finds plenty to like about a new Republican-backed effort to weaken the bargaining power of teachers unions.

Ohio State University likely will raise tuition for the fall to offset anticipated cuts in state aid, President E. Gordon Gee told The Dispatch yesterday. Ohio State also increased tuition this school year.

It could be a nasty game of musical chairs at next week’s state Board of Education meeting when a party of 20 shows up for 19 seats on the panel.

Here’s hoping we’ve seen the last of the snow in Oklahoma for a while.

Many local school districts are looking at adding time to the school day rather than adding days to the school year to make up for instruction time lost to this month’s snowstorms.

Immigration is poised to be a heated issue this year with Oklahoma lawmakers proposing nearly 30 bills ranging from restricting property rights of noncitizens to requiring school officials know the legal status of students.

Money for schools is always a hot topic, even more so as the Legislature starts tackling the budget for 2011-13. Earlier this month, Gov. John Kitzhaber released his proposal, including $5.558 billion for K-12 schools.

Some students, regardless of their immigration status, would pay tuition at state universities at the same rates as other Oregon residents under a bill that is likely to mimic some aspects of the national debate about immigration.

A group of Oregon students gathered this morning to ask legislators and Oregonians to support a bill that would offer in-state tuition to undocumented students who have been in an Oregon high school for at least three years and are actively working towards U.S. citizenship.

One of the more intriguing parts of Gov. John Kitzhaber’s recommended budget — a proposal to effectively shift nearly $100 million from the state highway fund to schools — has run into immediate trouble at the Legislature.

Gov. John Kitzhaber aims to fix Oregon’s broken school funding system by consolidating power and money into a single board for all levels of education — a board that he would chair.

Pittsburgh Public Schools could send more than $3.8 million in state money to other districts or private schools in the first year of a proposed tuition voucher program, according to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Heather Smith, who married right out of high school and started a family, all but gave up on becoming a nurse. She had planned to hit the books once her two daughters reached adolescence, but she couldn’t manage a 100-mile round trip to the nearest community college in a neighboring county.

Two years after Congress approved the government’s largest one-time investment in public schools, school districts are not expecting a repeat of the $100 billion investment nationwide.

If South Carolina must cut education funding, it should consider trimming teacher stipends for national certification and awards for the best-performing schools, according to the state’s Education Oversight Committee.

Students from College of Charleston, Clemson University and the University of South Carolina want to let lawmakers know the importance of higher education in the state.

Administrators in the Pierre and Fort Pierre school districts are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best as Gov. Dennis Daugaard continues with his plan to reduce education spending by 10 percent.

The specter of a major reduction in state support to public universities has a new faculty advisory committee at South Dakota State University looking at everything from furloughs to simply turning more lights out.

Tennessee teachers are being surveyed about the environment at their schools. According to the Tennessee Department of Education, it’s the first statewide survey of its kind.

While the number of public school students taking Advanced Placement courses nearly doubled last decade, the number who fail in AP classes also is up, a sign school leaders are relying too heavily on AP to increase course rigor.

Texas ranks near the bottom of all states in taxing and spending per capita, but is dead last in the percentage of adults with a high school diploma.

The 63,000 students of the University of Houston System could be paying higher tuition as early as the fall semester, Chancellor Renu Khator told a Senate committee Monday.

HUTTO, Tex. — The school superintendent in this rural town outside the state capital has taken steps to trademark the district’s oddly un-Texan school mascot — the Hutto Hippo — in a frantic effort to raise cash. He is also planning to put advertisements on school buses and to let retailers have space on the school Web site.

The latest chapter in the feud between Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett over $830 million in federal money for education unfolded Tuesday, when, in his State of the State address, the governor called out a “certain Texas congressman” for singling out Texas “for punishment in pursuit of his own agenda.”

President Obama proposed a 2012 Department of Education budget on Monday that would, if approved, significantly increase federal spending for public schools, and maintain the maximum Pell grant — the cornerstone financial-aid program — at $5,550 per college student.

A House bill to eliminate tenure for professors at Utah’s public universities has higher education officials concerned because of its impact on their ability to recruit quality faculty.

Lawmakers couldn’t come to a consensus Monday on prioritizing which public education programs to fund if more money becomes available — and it isn’t clear what will happen next.

Continuing a 50-year tradition, Sterling Scholar directors from Deseret News and KSL 5 Television began planning as soon as last year’s program concluded to ensure that the reputation of Utah’s most prestigious academic recognition program is maintained.

Allan Machon had a lot to consider. When deciding where to send his daughter for seventh grade, he looked at schools’ programs and whether they met goals under the federal No Child Left Behind law and the state’s U-PASS accountability system.

Changing who oversees Utah’s public education system might seem like a novel idea to some lawmakers, but a recent Deseret News/KSL survey by Dan Jones shows that notion isn’t popular among the public.

Tucker C. Watkins decided more than seven years ago that former Finance Secretary John W. Forbes II was not telling the truth about what happened to $5 million in state money meant to educate people in Virginia’s Tobacco Belt.

Funding public schools may legally be the state’s paramount duty, but that doesn’t mean that school districts across the state are not sharing in the pain of the state’s budget shortfall.

WASHINGTON — The traffic jams may be bigger in Washington state. Pell Grants to help college students may be smaller.

Washington state’s Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) program is a good way for families to save for college, but a bad deal for a state worried it won’t be able to meet future tuition payments.

The barks and howls of between 100 and 200 University of Washington students could be heard from the steps of the Capitol building in Olympia today.

WASHINGTON — A 30-year University of Wisconsin-Madison light research project would be terminated under President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget blueprint.

Wisconsin’s teachers union took some big steps last week toward improving our public schools. For the first time, the Wisconsin Education Association Council endorsed several major reforms that for years it had stubbornly resisted and stalled.

Medicaid and public schools are among the potential beneficiaries of a $247 million federal funding measure approved by West Virginia’s Legislature.

?Many Wyoming teachers considered the death of Senate File 52 last week to be a huge victory.