Remember that show Step By Step? How about Boy Meets World or Full House? You know where I’m going with this… TGIF! Before you head out for the weekend, catch up on a few education related reports released this week.

The Institute of Education Sciences’ National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assitance (that’s a mouthful!) released data on the breakdown of state allocation of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. States received varying amounts, due to receipt of competitive grant funds, such as Race to the Top. The average per pupil funding for states receiving the most funds was $1,750, compared to $1,205 for the states receiving the lowest amount. A take-away from all these numbers is that overall, high-need school districts (those with the highest rates of child poverty and lowest student achievement) received more funding per pupil than districts doing better.

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Are you sitting down? There’s a story in today’s #ednews roundup that may shock you. And like every reality TV program, I’ll make you wait until after the commercials (fold, in this instance!) to see it!

In more pedestrian news, there’s that thing happening in November. I keep forgetting, remind me? Oh, right, the election! The Minnesota Post gives a nice comparison of Obama and Romney’s education platforms. That it to say, they summarize a lot of the same rhetoric coming from both sides. It seems Obama has adopted most of the traditionally Republican ideas on education, and not surprisingly, Romney agrees with a lot of it. Who ever thought we’d see the day where those two guys agreed on anything?

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The following post comes from Jeremy Macdonald, a 5th Grade & Instructional Technology teacher at Mills Elementary in the Klamath Falls City Schools district in Klamath Falls Oregon.

Every year we ask our students to stretch themselves; to take risks; to try new things; to step outside their comfort zone. And every year we get frustrated when students are reluctant to do so. Failure is a natural part of the learning process (or cycle — however you want to put it), and it can be intimidating to a lot of our students.

Learning needs to be modeled. The process needs to be evident each and every day in our classrooms. And that means that you and I, as educators, need to fail. We need to make mistakes. We need to ask for help. We need to be vulnerable, and most importantly, we need to actually learn something.

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If Statistics 101 had been as sticky as these stats, I would have aced the class.

Speaking of not doing so hot in school, SAT scores for the class of 2012 dominate  education news this week. SAT reading scores are lowest since 1972; 57 percent did not score high enough to indicate college success. Part of the problem is the number of test takers: the SAT is down, and the ACT is up. Regardless of the causes, College Board President Gaston Caperton said, “When less than half of kids who want to go to college are prepared to do so, that system is failing.” Read more at the Washington Post.

The US Department of Education announced they’re awarding $9.9 million in grants to Kansas, Maryland and Oregon to improve their academic assessments. “High-quality assessments provide the data needed to improve education systems, instruction and, ultimately, student achievement,” Secretary Arne Duncan said. Read the full release at the Department of Education.

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In his weekly blog Take Note, John Merrow, veteran education reporter for PBS and NPR and president of Learning Matters, a media production company, looks at the good, bad and the ugly of blended learning.

Merrow supports blended learning – a new educational methodology that incorporates technology with traditional classroom instruction, when skilled, dedicated teachers are at the helm of implementation.

“For blended learning to soar, teachers cannot be controlling the action, and they don’t have to,” Merrow notes. “They aren’t walking away, of course, but they are mentoring and monitoring and coaching, and sometimes instructing.”

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I dare to guess that if you are in the education profession in any capacity, you’re at least familiar with this week’s Education Nation Summit (#educationnation on twitter). If you’re not familiar, you can see the full schedule and stream the remainder of the conference live at Education Nation.

This morning, President Barack Obama spoke to the Summit via a taped interview, and Presidential nominee Mitt Romney followed with live remarks and a Q&A with the audience. Romney praised his own teachers, said he supports teachers striking and that he’d like to grade schools A-F, a platform borrowed from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

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The following blog post comes from Robyn Young, the school librarian at Avon High School and the Avon Advanced Learning Center in Avon, Indiana. She is a former Media Specialist of the Year in the State of Indiana.

I was teaching a group of high school freshmen and sophomores in a health class yesterday. We were working on video editing, citing sources and using online databases. Working with the classroom teacher, we had created a great handout that gave them the information and resources that the students needed to get started, and the students were working hard.

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The District is downtrodden today. It was a rough weekend here: the Nationals lost to the Milwaukee Brewers, then the Redskins lost to the Cincinnati Bengals, and in between our beloved sports teams faltering, the new panda cub at the National Zoo died. While we nurse our wounds, we hope you’ll peruse today’s roundup of education news.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon writes an anecdotal appeal to Huffington Post readers on the importance of education. He shares his story of growing up in South Korea, a country at the time seeped in war and poverty. “The Republic of Korea was on its knees,” he writes, “but education enabled the country to stand tall again.”

“As the Secretary-General of the United Nations, I want every child, without exception, to have the same sense of opportunity that I had.”

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We took the month of August off from doing our weekly report roundup because, well, the District is dead in August. Have you experienced it? It’s eerie how quiet and toned down it gets. But with the onset of fall temperatures comes the increasingly busy fall political season, especially in an election year. We’re back this week with our Friday report roundup and will be every week. Make sure to check back every Friday!

The Urgency of Now: America’s Education System Neglects Almost Half of hte Nation’s Black and Latino Male Students

The Schott Foundation for Public Education released their state report on public education and the black male graduation rate. A startlingly low 52 percent of black males and 58 percent of Latino male ninth-graders graduate from high school in four years, compared to 78 percent of white, non-latinos of the same grade and sex, the report finds.

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We’ve seen First Lady Michelle Obama do the “dougie,” former President George W. Bush join in a traditional African dance and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jam to beats in South Africa. It’s only fitting that this week we add Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to that prestigious list of dancing politicians!

While we can all wish Sec. Duncan had danced Gangnam Style on his Back to School bus tour, he did hold his own in a line dance with kids and fellow cabinet Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (Department of Health and Human Services).

If that’s not enough news for you, here’s your daily roundup of #ednews highlights.

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