Emily's home from college and Bob's taking the whole family X-mas Tree Shopping at the auction in Chinatown. Then the parties. With some messy yard work thrown in. And someone has to climb onto the roof to replace the three bulbs that burned out on the Xmas lights. Love your neighbor, everyone. Janine, whose sister, Cree, abandoned her to spend time in Manila with the fam. for the holidays, plans to avoid everything remotely Christmassy if she can help it. But gosh darn it, that means no radio, no TV, no parking next to the larger than life glow-in-the-dark Nativity scene next door...
Enough of that. Your Saturday school news tidbits are behind the cut.
Battlefield School
Iraq's schools are increasingly caught in the crossfire of civil war, reports staff writer Solomon Moore in an A-1 story.
Takeover Measure in Court
Yesterday, School Me! live-blogged the battle over Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's schools plan from the courthouse. Today, staff writers Howard Blume and Duke Helfand have more on the story. So does Naush Boghossian of the Daily News.

Many people still view homeschooling as a relatively new concept. Truth be told, this method of teaching has been around for hundreds of years. In 2003, the National Household Education Survey estimated that 1.1 million students were being homeschooled. Although it's a small number compared to the total number of children in actual classrooms, it's a respectable number that should get people's attention.
Homeschooling is not going anywhere. As more and more people opt for this teaching method, the available resources and support groups will grow. There are currently resources available on the Internet, a growing number of support groups, and educational materials being created for homeschooling. Colleges are even now accepting non-traditional documentation, or transcripts, in the admissions process.
Opponents say that homeschoolers don't get a well-rounded education, are missing out on the socialization process or aren't receiving the proper foundation for their future. However the numbers speak for themselves. Homeschoolers consistently seem to outperform their public-school counterparts by an average of 30-37 percentage points in math and reading, according to a survey of test scores conducted by the National Center for Home Education.

Choosing to take high school online puts you in charge of your education. You are no longer bound by the constraints of the classroom. You can choose to study as fast as you choose, giving you the option to finish your online high school education in a fast and effective manner. Just as online high school can help learners that need extra help, it can also help students that need or want an accelerated education. Although the classes are structured, you can learn at a faster pace and finish sooner than at a traditional high school. Within a few dedicated years, you can be on to college or ready to start your career.
Boredom will be a thing of the past. In an online class, you don't have to wait for everyone to catch up or be at the mercy of the teacher to provide you with your assignments. Everything is available at your fingertips and you set the pace. Challenge yourself!

First, they require many more hours of class time than a typical public school. The school day starts early, at 8 a.m. or before, and often continues until after 4 p.m. These schools offer additional tutoring after school as well as classes on Saturday mornings, and summer vacation usually lasts only about a month. The schools try to leaven those long hours with music classes, foreign languages, trips and sports, but they spend a whole lot of time going over the basics: reading and math.
Second, they treat classroom instruction and lesson planning as much as a science as an art. Explicit goals are set for each year, month and day of each class, and principals have considerable authority to redirect and even remove teachers who aren't meeting those goals. The schools' leaders believe in frequent testing, which, they say, lets them measure what is working and what isn't, and they use test results to make adjustments to the curriculum as they go. Teachers are trained and retrained, frequently observed and assessed by their principals and superintendents. There is an emphasis on results but also on 'team building,' cooperation and creativity, and the schools seem, to an outsider at least, like genuinely rewarding places to work, despite the long hours. They tend to attract young, enthusiastic teachers, including many alumni of Teach for America, the program that recruits graduates from top universities to work for two years in inner-city public schools.