Only a few days after the UFT sued the DOE for infringing on teacher's freedom of speech by forbidding them to wear political buttons on the job, the feds ruled against the union, satisfying Chancellor Klein: "Keeping politics out of the classroom was our primary concern here, and our position has been fully vindicated." Just to be sure, DOE told one school to take down a poster of Barack Obama. The UFT, in a move that won't make Mayor Bloomberg happy, announced that they will support preserving term limits. And more potential teachers competing to be in the classroom could, according to reports, be one of the rare positive trends brought about by the financial meltdown.

Focus on special education and special needs students during the presidential debates elicited an angry response from one advocate. A parent in Brooklyn realized that her son may not have been receiving his mandated services - and someone at his school may have tried to cover it up - and an autistic three-year-old was left on an empty school bus for six hours. Sunday's Times Magazine looks into how schools are teaching autistic teenagers, and New York parents have successfully lobbied for more publicly-funded residential schools, to reduce the flow of students to private boarding schools in other states. But even a high profile lawsuit didn't seem to get special education students at Fredrick Douglas Academy IV their mandated services, state officials discovered.

While home-schooling rates have risen in the city (more than 2,600 students registered this year, while only 1,600 home schooled in 2001), the Times wrote about parents who have chosen anti-schooling, not to be confused with un-schooling. Research questions the way gifted students are designated, and the DOE may have ignored warnings of overcrowding in Riverdale schools. Classes are now offered in Brooklyn to “help parents help their kids,” and a conference today was supposed to help educators and school safety officers discipline better.

In high school news,a lawsuit on behalf of students who were illegally pushed out of Boys and Girls High School was settled,and the students can now hopefully get their degrees. And as 8th graders consider which high schools to apply to, the DOE released the list of the most popular schools last year: Francis Lewis HS in Flushing, followed by Benjamin N. Cardozo, Midwood, Forest Hills, and Edward Murrow. For students who want a new option, Post reporter Yoav Gonen wrote about new themed charter schools in the city. "These aren't your older siblings charter schools," he said. And vocational schools these days aren't offering your older siblings - or parents - technical education, either; they are much more academic. The way military recruiters gain high school students' information has also changed - and this new policy is already being protested by the NYCLU.