Today's news from the education front

Two stories of note today:

• Students seem enthused about the Philadelphia system's new African/African-American history course (see prev. here and here), to judge by hefty initial enrollments. This course will be a requirement for all students, starting with this year's freshmen, but the 5,000 currently signed up will be taking it as an upper-level elective by free choice.
  
  
• As another facet of the District's attempt to keep parents involved, they are now enabling online tracking of a variety of information about schools:

  That information includes attendance data, report-card grades, standardized test scores, progress reports, curriculum details and the ability to communicate with teachers via e-mail.

  Parents will get a password to allow them access to the data, and discounted computers will be made available where appropriate. So far the program has been instituted in only a subset of (elementary) schools, but administrator hope to widen its reach.