Amid the cacophony of special interests fighting to be heard in statehouses and on Capitol Hill, a cadre of current and former chief state school officers is elbowing its way into the nation's education debate at a time when states are taking more control of K-12 education. A little more than a year old, Chiefs for Change is an invitation-only…

Before awarding waivers from core tenets of the No Child Left Behind Act to 11 states, the U.S. Department of Education ordered changes to address a significant weakness in most states' proposals: how they would hold schools accountable for groups of students deemed academically at risk, particularly those in special education or learning English.…