Students

Four students and a teacher were arrested in connection with an alleged in-classroom hazing incident at a Fontana high school, police said Sunday. Fontana police were contacted by district officials Friday about a "possible hazing incident that involved the physical assault of at least one student" at A.B. Miller High School, according to a police statement. Officials have not released details of the alleged assault, citing an ongoing investigation. Police did say they believe the incident involved students in a summer school class that began May 31, and that a teacher, identified as 27-year-old Emmanuel De La Rosa "facilitated some students to carry out the hazing to limit behavioral problems within the classroom.

When Marcus Tyson visited his new campus days before his senior year was set to begin, he stood in a nearly empty parking lot and declared that the trailer before him looked "like prison. " By Tuesday, the first day of school, mounds of dirt and workbenches had disappeared, but the white-and-green portable classroom remained. "Still pretty awful," said Marcus, 17. Culver Park Continuation High School, now stuck in the back of a parking lot between the district's adult and middle schools, began classes this week with about 50 students in a single portable unit.

The College Board, which owns the SAT, blundered big-time when it agreed to give a special sitting of the high-stakes college entrance exam in August to a group of a few dozen students who will attend a pricey SAT-prep course at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Fortunately, it had a chance to erase this particular wrong choice -- and it did. A Times editorial lambasted the College Board last week for providing this advantage to well-heeled students -- the prep course, which also includes campus tours, costs $4,500 for three weeks -- especially considering that the original intent of the SAT was to equalize the college admissions process. (Many students would prefer to take the SAT during the summer, when the prep classes tend to be offered and when school isn't in session, with its own demands on their time.)

While Jennifer Clay was at home taking an online exam for her business law class, a proctor a few hundred miles away was watching her every move. Using a webcam mounted in Clay's Los Angeles apartment, the monitor in Phoenix tracked how frequently her eyes shifted from the computer screen and listened for the telltale sounds of a possible helper in the room. Her computer browser was locked - remotely - to prevent Internet searches, and her typing pattern was analyzed to make sure she was who she said she was: Did she enter her password with the same rhythm as she had in the past?

More details were emerging Friday about the case of three teenage boys arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 15-year-old Saratoga girl who later committed suicide. The boys, all 16, were taken into custody Thursday at two high schools in the San Jose area and booked into juvenile hall in connection with the attack on Audrie Pott, who hanged herself in September. "What happened to Audrie was tragic. It should never have happened. I hope they are brought to justice," said Lauren Cerri, a Pott family attorney, told KGO-TV.

Fewer than half of California's community college students transferred to a four-year school or earned an associate's degree in 2011-12, the lowest level of completion in five years, according to data released Tuesday by the chancellor's office. Statewide, 49.2% of students who enrolled in 2006 achieved those goals after six years, compared with 52.3% of students who enrolled in 2002. The completion rate for students needing remedial math and English was about 41%. By comparison, 71% of students who entered prepared to do college-level work in those subjects earned degrees or transferred.

"What is 'blaring?'" Emilio Sanchez asks his class of fourth graders during a reading lesson at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center. The children make a sound like a car horn and later discuss many other words they're about to encounter. Students, and their teachers, have more time to work on such exercises because the San Fernando charter school operates for 195 days, 20 more than the state-mandated 175. Sanchez and school director Anita Zepeda say the expanded calendar has brought improved test scores, better attendance and higher graduation rates for the 2,400 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Costa Mesa schools were hit by a second incident of students becoming sick after eating pot-laced brownies at school. Three TeWinkle Middle School students were hospitalized for observation Wednesday after eating a pot brownie. This incident is unrelated to a similar situation at Pomona Elementary School last month when a student brought a brownie containing pot to school and was later arrested, officials said. Two seventh-graders went to the TeWinkle front office at 12:40 p.m., complaining of stomach issues, Newport-Mesa Unified School District spokeswoman Laura Boss said.

There's a lot of fiction being spread about the new requirements to expand the reading of nonfiction in public schools. Some teachers say they have already been forced to cut important poetry and literature from their classes to make way for government reports and lists of invasive plants. To some extent, the complaints appear overblown. Contrary to what some news outlets have reported, no one is proposing to dump "Macbeth" for pamphlets about insulation. Nor is the proposal as ridiculous as some suggest; the planned changes could valuably broaden students' reading, writing and thinking skills.

The nation's second-largest school district officially launched itself once more into an ongoing national debate over social promotion, the practice of moving students to the next grade even when they're academically unprepared. The Los Angeles Board of Education agreed last week to begin revamping a policy that bars the advancement of unqualified students to the next grade. The rules have been loosely enforced. One proposal is to focus more intensively on struggling students in grades three, five and seven, considered key transition years.