The common standards are not just for public schools. With all but four states having adopted them since 2010, districts have little choice but to implement the Common Core State Standards. But many private schools are also making the transition. Many Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and other private schools have adopted at least portions of the…

As the country's K-12 student population grows more ethnically diverse, students of color face the troubling possibility of never having a teacher who looks like them. According to federal data, more than 40 percent of students are nonwhite, compared to just 17 percent of teachers, and that mismatch appears to be on the rise. But a new project is…

Students may say a teacher's lesson is boring, a researcher says, when frustration is really what they feel. While boredom is a perennial student complaint, emerging research shows it is more than students' not feeling entertained, but rather a "flavor of stress" that can interfere with their ability to learn and even their health. An…

The California school that parents want to turn into a charter now has two organizations seeking to make the change. At the end of a process that drew just four applicants, two relatively small California organizations are each making a case that they be allowed to help lead one of the most publicized school turnaround efforts in the nation's…

As school closures are increasingly used as a remedy to budget woes and a solution to failing schools in many cities, debates are intensifying about their effect on student performance and well-being, on district finances, and on communities and the processes districts use to choose which schools will be shuttered. Student and parent groups in…

At City Springs and many other schools across the country, restorative practices are about holding students accountable and getting them to right a wrong. The approach is getting more notice than ever as criticism grows of zero-tolerance disciplinary policies that often require out-of-school suspension and expulsion. Educators are turning to…

The 2012 presidential election and many state and local races are only a few weeks away, but schools are not doing much to promote student interest in the elections or provide civic education more broadly, new research suggests. A report last week from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), at Tufts…

A tight race for governor, the heavy burden of rebuilding a school funding system recently declared unconstitutional, and a fourth ballot measure in two decades on charter schools has placed Washington state on an intense--and unpredictable--road for education this year. Washington is one of nine states that do not allow charter schools, and the…

Given the flexibility to revise their academic goals under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, a vast majority of the states that received federal waivers are setting different expectations for different subgroups of students, an "Education Week" analysis shows. That marks a dramatic shift in policy and philosophy from the original law. The…

New laws in California have set the state on a course for some potentially significant changes to the curriculum, including a measure that revisits the matter of teaching Algebra 1 in 8th grade and another that revamps the state's textbook-adoption process and hands districts greater leeway in choosing instructional materials. The algebra-related…

Learning "how to be a Haut Gap student" is one of the basics at Charleston's Haut Gap Middle School. Along with reading, science, and mathematics classes, every student at Haut Gap Middle School takes a course in how to be a Haut Gap student. For most students, the class is 40 minutes a day for nine weeks. But it can last 18 weeks for students who…

An explosion in the variety and availability of cognitive-enhancing drugs, from prescriptions like Ritalin to commercial drinks like NeuroFuel, raises concerns for scientists and educators alike--not just over the potential for abuse, but also over what educators and researchers consider, and how they approach, normal achievement. Evidence is…

Ask Antonio White what he thinks of Race to the Top--President Barack Obama's signature K-12 initiative--and the Florida teacher will tell you the competitive-grant program is a "difficult pill to swallow." Merit pay for teachers based partly on student test scores is "a joke," he says. He's also not a fan of expanding charter schools, or of U.S.…

Blended learning--the mix of virtual education and face-to-face instruction--is evolving quickly in schools across the country, generating a variety of different models. This special report, the second in a three-part 2012-13 series on virtual education, examines several of those approaches and aims to identify what is working and where…

Two years after the U.S. Department of Education awarded $650 million in Investing in Innovation grants, some of the winners are still facing financial uncertainty. Other grantees have also encountered problems with matching funds coming through, and some nonprofit grantees have been forced to contribute their own money to match the initial…