Over the past 15 years, federal, state, and local officials have pursued a broad range of reforms aimed at ensuring that the nation's public school system is more accountable--that it delivers a rich, full education for children in communities across the country. New research from the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda suggests that there…

Why do some schools in high-poverty communities produce remarkable stories of success while others fail? This study, conducted by Public Agenda and sponsored by the Ohio Business Roundtable, the Ohio Department of Education and The Ohio State University, attempts to shed light on this fundamentally important question by talking directly to…

This is a report on how community stakeholders, including parents, teachers, community leaders and advocates, think about current efforts by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to "turn around" Chicago's lowest-performing schools, and their expectations for future school reform actions. It was prepared by Public Agenda, with support from…

This "Lessons Learned" report finds two specific areas in which teacher training may be lacking: preparedness for the diversity of the contemporary American classroom and teaching students with special needs. Seventy-six percent of new teachers said teaching an ethnically diverse student body was covered in their training, but only 39 percent said…

This report is the third in a series of "Reality Check" reports finds that five years into the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act and over a dozen years into the so-called standards movement in American education, the public now sees these reforms as "necessary, but not sufficient." This is consistent across a number of indicators…