The big battles over school vouchers in American education have focused on programs serving low-income children who live in urban areas. Milwaukee's program, begun in 1990, is the biggest and oldest in the country, and the District of Columbia effort, funded by the federal government, has been the most carefully studied. Both have been focal…

Since the run-up to the 2008 election, the Democratic Party has been home to two prominent and very different reform wings. One, spearheaded by the group Democrats for Education Reform and notable school-district chiefs like New York's Joel Klein and Washington, D.C.'s Michelle Rhee, is the Education Equality Project (EEP). The other, A Broader,…

Students in the United States spend much less time in school than do students in most other industrialized nations, and the school year has been essentially unchanged for more than a century. This is not to say that there is no interest in extending the school year. While there has been little solid evidence that doing so will improve learning…

Fill it out and turn it in: that's the message thousands of school districts send parents each year when they offer applications for the federal government's National School Lunch Program (NSLP). And each year, millions of parents comply. But new data suggest that the process for verifying eligibility for the program is fundamentally broken and…

Teacher pensions consume a substantial portion of school budgets. If relatively generous pensions help attract effective teachers, the expense might be justified. But new evidence suggests that current pension systems, by concentrating benefits on teachers who spend their entire careers in a single state and penalizing mobile teachers, may…

Proposals to reauthorize No Child Left Behind seek to ensure "equitable" access to effective teachers. The U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top fund rewards state plans for "ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals" and for "ambitious yet achievable annual targets to increase the number and percentage of…

Never before have Americans had greater access to information about school quality. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), all school districts are required to distribute annual report cards detailing student achievement levels at each of their schools. Local newspapers frequently cover the release of state test results, emphasizing…

Education reform often appears a zero-sum battle, one that pits crusaders demanding accountability and choice against much of the traditional education establishment, including teachers unions. The political skirmishes in Florida, including court fights over vouchers and charter schools, and ongoing struggles over a parade of different merit pay…

A major debate among education reformers over how best to reduce the achievement gap broke out during the 2008 presidential campaign. Most advocates on both sides backed Barack Obama, but they urged him to pursue different policies. The Education Equality Project (EEP) supported a continuation of accountability and other school-focused reforms.…

As the economic outlook continues to darken, school districts will be looking for ways to cut costs, and they will no doubt wrestle with some difficult issues. When does it make sense to keep classes small? When does it make sense to increase class sizes to cut costs? Such debates are often carried out in the absence of information about what…

"Human capital" is quickly becoming the new site-based management. While few are sure what it means, everyone craves it, has a model to deliver it, and is quick to tout its restorative powers. It's trendy and impressive sounding, but too often settles for recycling familiar nostrums or half-baked ideas in the guise of new jargon. To improve…

More than seven years ago, President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) into law. Sweeping calls for testing, intervening in persistently low-performing schools, and policing teacher quality made it the most ambitious legislation on K-12 schooling in American history. The law, due for congressional reauthorization in 2007, still…

Each year, between 10 and 20 percent of schoolchildren in the United States are exposed to domestic violence. According to psychologists, such exposure can lead to aggressive behavior, decreased social competence, and diminished academic performance. A majority of parents and school officials believe that children who are troubled, whatever the…

Tracking students into different classrooms according to their prior academic performance is controversial among both scholars and policymakers. If teachers find it easier to teach a homogeneous group of students, tracking could enhance school effectiveness and raise test scores of both low- and high-ability students. If students benefit from…

This article reports that while home schooling may have particular appeal to celebrities, over the last decade families of all kinds have embraced the practice for widely varying reasons: no longer is home schooling exclusive to Christian fundamentalism and the countercultural Left. Along with growing acceptance of home schooling nationally has…