Mara Klecker

2 weeks ago | startribune.com | Mara Klecker

Minnesota teachers with decades of experience will get a boost to their pensions, allowing them to retire sooner with lower early retirement penalties. That's thanks to a pension reform measure approved by the Legislature that reduces inequity in pension benefits between state teachers hired before 1989 and those hired after. The bill, which provides about $80 million in pension funding for firefighters, police and teachers over the next two years, passed with broad bipartisan support.

3 weeks ago | startribune.com | Mara Klecker

In preparing students for Advanced Placement (AP) tests this year, Minnesota teachers had to ask a few new questions: Do you know your username? Your online password? Is your laptop fully charged? That's because the College Board, the national organization responsible for the courses' standardized tests - which allow high school students to earn college credit - has transitioned most of its AP exams online.

3 weeks ago | startribune.com | Mara Klecker

By Mara Klecker After much debate and a delayed vote, the Anoka-Hennepin school board is set to determine the future of lessons on social and emotional skills. The Minnesota Star Tribune Amid culture-war debates about how students should be taught social and emotional skills in school, the Anoka-Hennepin school board may choose to scrap the district's current social-emotional learning curriculum. (Aaron Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune) First it was Common Core. Then Critical Race Theory.

3 weeks ago | startribune.com | Mara Klecker

The new Math and Science Academy campus in Woodbury, which broke ground May 5, will offer more space to students crowded into its existing charter school buildings - and maybe from the surrounding traditional schools as well. Both the public charter school and the traditional South Washington County school district are growing, bucking stagnant enrollment trends elsewhere in the metro and across the state.

1 month ago | startribune.com | Mara Klecker

The board for the state's largest school district voted to approve social studies textbooks with a series of caveats, including delaying new state standards that mandate ethnic studies for another year. And it chose to table a decision about the future of current social and emotional lessons. The Anoka-Hennepin board members on Monday approved the purchase of books for U.S. history, world history and AP psychology courses.