Two interesting stories to check out in education news today. First, Bloomberg news does a really excellent job of revealing how Wall Street investment banks JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley fleeced Pennsylvania school districts for billions of dollars by offering them derivative contracts. These are investments tied to changing interest rates, for which school boards were routinely charged bank fees five times higher than typical rates, as well as financial adviser rates up to 10 times higher. School districts say they simply didn’t understand what they were getting into. A reminder, first of all, that the complicated financial-ization of our economy makes no sense for a reason. And that finance and economic experts are valuable school board members.

Also see the New York Times‘ profile of Cheektowaga Central Middle School, outside Buffalo, New York. The school has instituted a strict disciplinary policy in which students who are failing classes are barred from all extracurricular activities, whether dances or academic clubs. Seems like overkill to me. While it is sensible for dances or barbecues to be privileges, after school clubs should be open to all — especially at-risk kids. Participation in a part of school that actually excites them has been shown to improve children’s academic performance. Club advisers can also be powerful mentors for kids who don’t connect with their classroom teacher.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.