Given the popularity and practical uses for technology, you’d be hard-pressed to find a school district in Arizona that isn’t giving students a taste of 21st century education.

The spread of laptops, hand-held devices and smart phones in classrooms is driven by rapid expansion of technology itself and by the fact that it’s the world that kids live in today.

The Senate on Jan. 19 approved a two-bill package that expands a program allowing a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions to groups that give scholarships to private school students.

At least 28 states, including Arizona, will participate in the first Digital Learning Day on Feb. 1, to celebrate innovative teachers and instructional strategies focusing on the use of technology.

Even with the most up-to-date computers and other technology gizmos, key educators say schools will not be able to deliver quality education without effective teachers at the front of the classroom.

Arizona earned high marks for its school-choice policies this week in separate reports from two national organizations, which had particular praise for the state’s education savings account program.

Sex, money, the Bible and the U.S. Constitution are some of the subjects lawmakers are proposing this session to be taught in Arizona classrooms.

Most of the bills come from Republicans inspired by personal experiences, and they manage to reconcile their proposed classroom mandates with the principles of small government and local control of curriculum.

Arizona schools were ranked in the bottom 10 states in a national report Thursday that gave the state a below–average grade in student achievement, teacher requirements and state spending, among other areas.

The state will no longer be mired in litigation over Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program.

TUSD’s governing board and a federal judge made sure of that Jan. 10 when they respectively disbanded the program and dismissed 11 teachers as plaintiffs in a constitutional challenge to the 2010 law that restricts the teaching of ethnic studies in the state, which was passed as HB2281.

Sen. Al Melvin is hoping there is a dual solution to the problems facing K-12 schools and nuclear power plants, and he wants Arizona to take advantage of the opportunity.

Nuclear plants need a place to store waste and reprocess spent fuel, and Melvin thinks Arizona would be ideal. And if Arizona became home to such a site, Melvin said it could be used to fund schools.

A coalition of education and business groups is hoping to have a proposed ballot measure drafted by the end of the month after polling showed the majority of Arizonans would support the extension of the Proposition 100 tax hike.