Education notebook

— LR debate team in N.Y. for contest

Members of the debate team at Little Rock’s Parkview Magnet High School are in New York City through Monday to participate in the Empire Mock Trial Championships.

The international event includes 36 debate teams from places such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and South Korea, according to the Little Rock School District. The Parkview team qualified based on its four mock-trial state championships in the past six years.

The team had to raise $16,000 for the New York trip. Parkview alumni contributed to the efforts, said Patricia Treadway, Parkview’s debate teacher.

Students competing in the event are: seniors Kassidy Boyle, Kailum Scharf and Laura Yoder; juniors Sky Cardwell, Tanner Clements, Charlie Cohen, Wilson Jones and John Hampton; and sophomores Hallee Johnson and Amanda Sherrill.

LR’s Central High gets math honors

Little Rock’s Central High has some of the best high school mathematicians in the country, Seattle-basedNational Assessment & Testing announced last week based on the 15th-place finish the school earned in a math contest administered by the company.

Two Central students received individual honors for their efforts on the 30-minute, 100-problem test known as the 2011 Fall Startup Event. Freshman Zen Tang placed sixth in the nation in the ninth-grade division, and senior Joseph Berleant was 24th in the 12th-grade division.

To be successful in the contest, student competitors must not only have strong mathematical skills but also be able to quickly decide which problems to solve and which to skip.

Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, N.J., was the top performing school in the 121-school competition. Some of the other high-performing schools were from San Jose, San Diego and Palo Alto, Calif.; Carmel, Ind.; and Huntsville, Ala.

Central outperformed the Avid Academy for Gifted Youth in Irvine, Calif., the United World College of South East Asia in Singapore and the Memphis University School in Memphis.

Eight in state win

writing awards

Eight Arkansas high school seniors are among 520 nationwide awarded 2011 Achievement Awards in Writing by the National Council of Teachers of English.

The students and their high schools are Ashley Cunningham, Fayetteville High; Carl Napolitano and Ian Wren, Little Rock Central High; David Lepine, Little Rock Christian Academy; Maggie Nichols, Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock; Stephen Jones, Little Rock Parkview Magnet High; Tiancheng Zhang, Pulaski Academy in Little Rock; and Caleb Meyer, Wynne High School.

The awards are based on prose or verse and on impromptu themes written by students under supervision.

The number of winners from each state is determined by doubling the number of the state’s representatives in Congress.

Arkansas makes

Race to Top bid

Arkansas and 34 other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have applied for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, a $500 million state-level competitive grant program to improve early learning and development, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services report.

The applications will now undergo peer review by early childhood-education experts from across the country. In mid-December, the departments will award funds tothe highest-ranked applicants within funding availability.

The awards will range from about $50 million up to $100 million, depending on a state’s population of children from low-income families and the state’s proposed plan.

“I’m thrilled to see so many states taking advantage of this opportunity,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a news release. “Their collaborative work is helping ensure that all children enter kindergarten with the skills they need to be successful in school and beyond.”

LR district seeks volunteer readers

The Little Rock School District’s Volunteers in Public Schools program is recruiting volunteer readers for its annual Jane Mendel Reading Day on Nov. 15.

The program goal is to place a volunteer reader in each of the district’s 688 elementary classrooms. Volunteers can bring their own storybooks or choose books from the school library to read. Reading to a class generally takes about 30 minutes.

Volunteer readers can register by calling the Volunteers in Public Schools office at (501) 447-8477 or by connecting to the office under the “Visitors” link on the Little Rock School District’s website, lrsd.org.

Arkansas, Pages 18 on 10/23/2011

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