Arizona students will still take the AIMS next year, but at least in Mesa, students will not have to take districtwide tests because the current assessments do not follow new education standards that will be taught in all classrooms.

Finding air-conditioned summer entertainment can be tricky in the Valley of the Sun. It got a bit easier when Arizona’s newest cultural attraction — Butterfly Wonderland — opened last month in Scottsdale.

Gilbert’s Higley Unified School District will file papers with the state Department of Education to turn its two under-construction middle schools into charter schools this fall after a 4-1 vote by the governing board Thursday night.

Imagine you are a 19-year-old Marine. You are riding in a Humvee with four other Marines — your friends — when an improvised explosive device (IED) explodes.

NEW YORK — Thomas Sohmers, 17, of Hudson, Mass., has been working at a research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since he was 13, developing projects ranging from augmented reality eyewear to laser communications systems. This spring, his mom, Penny Mills, let him drop out of 11th grade. She says she "could see how much of the work he was doing at school wasn't relevant to what he wanted to learn."

College students have spoken and lecture-based learning is prehistoric. An emerging trend on which colleges are reporting solid success rates is lecture-free classes. This approach to learning is being designed to promote deeper student learning, collaborative learning, skilled communication, self-managed learning, and cross-disciplinary and technology-enhanced coursework. Lecture-free classes are a response to growing criticism of the traditional, often passive lecture-based college classes which some educators say are a turn-off to students, leading to aggravation and poor grades.

Expect More Arizona, a statewide education advocacy organization dedicated to raising education expectations in Arizona announced four Excellence Tour Spotlight award winners during an event held on Tuesday, including Mesa's Great Hearts Academies. According to a release, "the Phoenix finalists for the Expect More Excellence Tour demonstrate and celebrate what Arizonans are doing today to elevate world-class education in the community."

Editor's note: Claire Hoogenboom is a broadcast major studying journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University.

Valedictorians:

In the Tempe, future inclusive leadership begins early due to a nationally recognized program ran by the city’s Diversity Office.

Higley Elementary and Middle School is undergoing a transition to a back-to-basics style of instruction in 2013-14 - the inaugural school year as “The Higley Traditional Academy.”

BASIS Mesa, the acclaimed charter school's newest campus, is taking shape as construction crews move dirt and the school's new leader takes her first steps to recruit students and hire teachers.

“Reveille” mini camps offer a wake-up call for addicts, their families and helpers; while a two-hour workshop for couples provides the means for “Reunification.”

While the job market nationally continues to show mixed results, high school students in the East Valley recently had the opportunity to learn how best to make a start in the business world at Junior Achievement’s annual “You’re Hired” event.

Coming soon to downtown Mesa: big changes to one of the city’s acclaimed all-ages attractions.

Coming soon to downtown Mesa: big changes to one of the city’s acclaimed all-ages attractions.

Words struggled to exit her throat: “They let us see him. I sat there, behind the curtains and sobbed and hugged my son’s leg. I pleaded, Oh God, Oh God! How can I live without him?” Ten years ago, this month, this East Valley mother buried her only son.

Calling it "an important part of improving education,'' Gov. Jan Brewer signed legislation Thursday to eliminate the AIMS test -- including the graduation requirement -- paving the way for something else to measure the new Common Core standards already being implemented in Arizona schools.

On Jan. 16, students from 14 Valley schools gathered at Gilbert’s Higley Center for the Performing Arts for the Building Bridges program to fight bullying in schools. In May of last year, Kyrene Altadeña Middle School students participated in the Bully Academy Webquest, an online course involving reading articles, watching videos about bullying and most importantly, talking about it. After all, this is about how young people learn to express their emotions. In November 2011, students from Chandler’s Tarwater Elementary School spent a day focused on kindness, respect, and friendship.

School districts have begun enrolling children for next school year’s preschool and kindergarten-prep programs, and several parents may wonder whether their children are ready for such programs or even what their children could learn in preschool.

How are the United Nations, the Arizona legislature, and our state’s schools linked?

Arizona high schoolers may soon be rid of having to pass AIMS -- or any standardized test -- to graduate.

We learned in school about the inventors such as Edison and Bell who parlayed their inventions into fortunes, of the great capitalists of the Gilded Age such as Rockefeller and Carnegie and Morgan who took great risks on their way to becoming titans of industry.