Education

Kyle Mangieri teaches 7th grade social studies in Fairfield, Ct. On Friday, he found out about the school shooting while he was at work. Mangieri lives very close to Sandy Hook Elementary School. He goes back to his classroom on Monday while deciding what to tell his students.

A federal court in Texas on Monday will take up the case of a high-school student who refuses to wear her location-tracking school ID.

The 15-year-old sophomore says the ID badge, which has an embedded radio frequency identification tag, is a violation of her rights. The student, Andrea Hernandez, believes the ID is "the mark of the beast" from the Book of Revelation.

Alan Alda founded The Flame Challenge last year to promote better science communication, and he started by asking scientists to come up with a kid-friendly explanation for a flame. Now, Alda is back with round two of the popular contest, and kids want to know: What is time?

Shawn Rux took over as principal of MS 53, a New York City middle school, last year. At the time, 50 or 60 kids were absent every day. You could understand why they stayed away: The school was chaos.

Twenty-two teachers had quit, the entire office staff had quit, and hundreds of kids had been suspended. The school was given a grade of F from the city's department of education.

"It was in a bad place," Rux says.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

The University of California is no stranger to protests over wars, tuition hikes, budget cuts, you name it. But the 10-campus system is seeing a different kind of revolt this week.

As NPR's Richard Gonzales reports, it is a resounding rejection of the university's new logo.

Afshin Gharib and William Phillips are associate professors of psychology at the Dominican University of California. They are also carpool buddies.

On drives to and from work, they used to argue over what kind of exams work best to test student knowledge, encourage retention and keep stress low.

Gharib decided to change his traditional, closed-book testing style about 10 years ago. He got tired of curving exam scores and decided to try out the open-book style.