Education

This year marks the first in several years music and physical education are at all Bonneville Joint School District 93 elementary schools.

The Post Register reports the district cut funding for the two programs at its elementary schools in 2011, when the state was reducing education funding due to the economic downturn.

Schools chief Sherri Ybarra is making it official, formally launching her re-election bid today.

Ybarra, a Republican from Mountain Home, was elected superintendent of public instruction in 2014.

She first told Idaho Education News in a videotaped interview in December 2015 that she would seek a second term in 2018.

University of Idaho President Chuck Staben is a finalist for the same position at a New Mexico university.

Each fall, more than 2,500 Idaho freshmen begin their college careers by taking remedial classes.

The Idaho State Board of Education has announced that more than 20,000 high school students have been admitted to Idaho's public colleges and universities.

According to the board, this is the third year students with qualifying grades and test scores have automatically been admitted to Boise State University, University of Idaho, Idaho State University, Lewiston-Clark State College or one of the state's four community colleges.

A number of rural Idaho school districts are struggling to lure licensed teachers to classrooms causing the districts to hire more unlicensed educators.

The Times-News reported on Sunday that the Twin Falls School District hired 20 unlicensed educators this year as other nearby districts are also hiring more unlicensed teachers.

Reading scores improved in the first year of Idaho’s $11.25 million “literacy initiative,” but most scores fell short of the goals set by local educators.

More than two-thirds of spring 2017 test scores failed to meet the benchmark goals school leaders set in the fall of 2016, according to an Idaho Education News analysis of test scores and local reading plans.

Idaho's public schools chief is seeking a 6.8 percent increase in education spending for 2018, describing it as a budget with no surprises and no new initiatives.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra released her plan Friday. If approved by lawmakers in January, Idaho's public school funding would bump up nearly $114 million more than what lawmakers allocated this year for a total of $1.78 billion.

Idaho’s 2016 college “go-on” numbers are up slightly, compared to a similar snapshot from 2015.

But even if the numbers are improving — and that’s still open to interpretation — they also show that Idaho has a long way to go to meet its ambitious college graduation goals.