Holy Family School

Tuesday night was busy and chilly on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx, even if most eyes and minds were focused a few miles south, where the Yankees were hosting a playoff game. Out of the darkness around 7:30, squeezing through the doors of crowded buses and descending the steps from an elevated train platform, about 40 football players walked one by one across uneven sidewalks lugging shoulder pads, cleats and brightly painted helmets. Related Where Football Means Business (October 23, 2010) Interviews, insight and analysis from The Times on the competition and culture of college football.

Students across the country are going on notice that drinking, smoking, using drugs or posting risqu? photos on the Web on weekends and during the summer can get them sidelined from school activities during the school year. Student athletes and those involved in other extracurricular activities in states including New Jersey, South Carolina and Indiana are signing codes of conduct that hold them accountable for their behavior regardless of whether school is in session.

The University of California, Berkeley , eliminated five of its intercollegiate sports programs Tuesday, two of which, baseball and men’s rugby, had become particular points of pride over the years. The move comes at a time when athletics have faced strong criticism at Berkeley because money-losing sports have been subsidized while the academic departments have been forced to make severe cuts.

NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) — New Jersey has already thrown enough money at its largest school district to make it among the nation’s best-funded, yet it remains in the pits. Can a $100 million gift from the founder of Facebook really turn it around? The money hasn’t even arrived, but it’s already creating a buzz in Newark, where three out of five third-graders can’t read and write at their grade level

One morning last winter I watched a middle-school teacher named Al Doyle give a lesson, though not your typical lesson. This was New York City, a noncharter public school in an old building on a nondescript street near Gramercy Park, inside an ordinary room that looked a lot like all the other rooms around it, with fluorescent lights and linoleum floors and steam-driven radiators that hissed and clanked endlessly

Public schools across the nation, many facing budget shortfalls, have been charging students fees to use textbooks or to take required tests or courses.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Jefferson Thomas, who as a teenager was among nine black students to integrate a Little Rock high school in the nation’s first major battle over school segregation, has died.

CHICAGO — From continuing education and enrichment classes to graduate school, many of America’s retirees are pursuing their interests at the college level. It’s a trend that is likely to grow as seniors’ ranks swell with baby boomers, who by 2015 will represent some 35% of the U.S. population, looking to either acquire new job skills or simply enjoy new learning experiences.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Challenging civil rights organizations and teachers’ unions that have criticized his education policies, President Barack Obama said Thursday that minority students have the most to gain from overhauling the nation’s schools. “We have an obligation to lift up every child in every school in this country, especially those who are starting out furthest behind,” Obama told the centennial convention of the National Urban League

WASHINGTON (AP) — Challenging civil rights organizations and teachers’ unions that have criticized his education policies, President Barack Obama said Thursday that minority students have the most to gain from overhauling the nation’s schools. “We have an obligation to lift up every child in every school in this country, especially those who are starting out furthest behind,” Obama told the centennial convention of the National Urban League . RACE TO THE TOP: 18 states, D.C