During the past year, teachers have pushed their technology skills to the next level, improving their understanding of how to use learning management systems effectively; integrating digital curricula, online assessments, and interactive games into learning; and upgrading their skills for using modern communication tools such as Zoom. This new…

The COVID-19 pandemic has school leaders searching for ways to keep the fiscal ship afloat amid plummeting revenues, unexpected costs, and state and local budget uncertainty. This second of three Quality Counts 2020 installments offers lessons from past economic downturns and survey data capturing district-level views of the current crisis, along…

With just months to go until the nation's overhauled K-12 law goes into effect, state policymakers are still scrambling to firm up the infrastructure for their education systems, under the new blueprint laid out in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). They're doing it at a time of political change and policy uncertainty at the national level,…

For the past decade and a half, the fight to improve America's schools has been fought largely on two fronts: academic standards as one battleground, and accountability the other, with the issue of mandatory testing adding heat to a very public--and increasingly politicized--debate. The questions for policymakers and educators are as direct as…