Educators and policy observers are keeping a close eye on two controversial experiments in private management of public schools now unfolding in the western Michigan city of Muskegon Heights and in the Detroit-area community of Highland Park. Citing chronic budget woes in the communities' low-performing school districts, Gov. Rick Snyder of…

As Congress debates how to structure the next iteration of federal school accountability, a new national study has raised serious concerns about the effectiveness of test-based incentives to improve education. A blue-ribbon committee of the National Academies' National Research Council undertook a nearly decade-long study of test-based incentive…

Stubbornly high college remediation rates have revealed a painful equation: High school completion does not equal college readiness. That disconnection has prompted national leaders to focus like never before on figuring out how to ensure that high school graduates are truly ready to succeed in college. In that quest, a California program is often…

The author reports on a national study of middle school students in 40 charter networks which finds that, when it comes to having an impact on student achievement, results vary and, overall, charter students do not learn dramatically more than their counterparts in regular public schools. The findings from the research group Mathematica and the…

The author reports the results of a nationwide survey of school board members which show a shift in focus toward student achievement and away from district-management issues known as the "killer B's": buses, buildings, books, budgets, and bonds. But today's school board members appear not to be as interested in issues that many policy observers…

Just as it has every June since 2006, the U.S. Department of Education last month delivered a rating to each state and territory based on the performance of its special education programs. The ratings, intended to fulfill the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act's requirement that "measurable" and "rigorous" targets be…

The author reports the finding of a study released by the National Research Council, which is an arm of the National Academies, a scientific body created to advise the federal government on scientific matters. After six years of study, a national panel of prominent scholars has concluded that teachers from alternative programs appear no worse--or…