Education

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**FILE** Education Secretary Arne Duncan speaks on Jan. 12, 2012, at Lincoln High School in Gahanna, Ohio. (Associated Press)

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Prince George's County firefighters work to extinguish a fire caused by a malfunctioning boiler at Gaywood Elementary School. Photo from Prince George's County Fire/EMS news blog.

Hart Middle School student Timothy Joyner, 11, right, reacts as he struggles to play Phiona Mutesi, 15, a national chess champion from Uganda, left, as Mutesi visits with District elementary and middle school students in the after school group Chess Challenge in D.C. at Hart Middle School in Southeast, Washington, D.C., Tuesday, November 27, 2012. Chess Challenge in D.C. is a non-profit that teaches the game of chess as well as life skills to students in 24 schools in the District. Mutesi, who is now a international chess player who is also on a book tour, was discovered by Sports Outreach Institute, an evangelical organization that feeds, educates and teaches sports. (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times)

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Young dancers playing the part of the mice get ready to take to the stage in the hallway for The Nutcracker at W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Va., Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. This is the final day of the show which is presented by the Fairfax Ballet 2012. (Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times)

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Police investigate a homicide at Casper College on Friday morning, Nov. 30, 2012, in Casper, Wyo. At least one person was killed and another was wounded Friday in an attack at Casper College, a community college in central Wyoming. It happened around 9 a.m., said school spokesman Rich Fujita. (AP Photo/Casper Star-Tribune, Alan Rogers)

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Dunbar Senior High School on New Jersey Avenue in Northwest is one of the high schools in the nation’s capital. The District’s public schools had the worst four-year high school graduation rate in the country 2010-2011. (Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times)

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D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson noted the difficulty of comparing the District’s strictly urban school district to geographically diverse systems in states across the country. (The Washington Times)

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A gambling school student (top) practices on a blackjack table in Macau as others (above) learn how to run roulette games. Their school, the Gaming Teaching and Research Center within the Macau Polytechnic Institute, maintains the biggest mock casino in Asia. Macao has become the world’s biggest gambling market, and the demand for casino workers has driven unemployment down to 2 percent. Along with the benefits, however, have come a lopsided economy, soaring property prices and what many see as the erosion of traditional community values. (Associated Press)

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During his biweekly press briefing Wednesday, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray and state schools superintendent Hosanna Mahaley talk about how a 4-year-old special-needs student was left alone on a school bus for several hours Tuesday. (Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times)

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Kayla Saucedo, an eighth-grader at Anson Jones Middle School, uses her new ID card to check out a book in the library in San Antonio. The fourth-largest school district in Texas is experimenting with “locator” chips in student ID badges, allowing administrators to track the whereabouts of 4,200 students. (Associated Press)