Louisiana state schools Superintendent Cecil J. Picard is working to rebuild the New Orleans school system while battling Lou Gehrig's disease. Cecil J. Picard walks confidently and purposefully to his seat, using a cane to support his weakening right leg. The widow's peak and his graying hair are signs that he's lived 68 years, and the cane…

Steeped in a distinctive view of leadership, graduates of the Broad Superintendents Academy have landed some of public education's top jobs. In this article, the author features the Broad Superintendents Academy, a program established by Eli Broad's Foundation which spends roughly $45,000 to train each of the business executives, military…

Following the approval of legislation that would divide the city's public school system into racially and ethnically distinct districts, many Omaha community members and leaders mid-April 2006 expressed a mix of outrage, confusion, and disbelief. In this article, the author discusses the measure that calls for dividing any school system in the…

After months of deliberations and promises of dramatic change for Los Angeles' embattled schools, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa the week of April 17, 2006 called for California lawmakers to put his office in charge of running the day-to-day operations of the nation's second largest school district. In his first State of the City address, Mr.…

Taking a significant step toward supporting district-level changes, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last week announced a $21 million grant to help the Chicago school system overhaul teaching and learning in high school classrooms. The effort, which is to start in the fall with 14 schools is slated to reach about half of Chicago's high…

Major initiatives in New York City and Chicago to close unsuccessful schools and create small schools in their wake are stirring criticism from some community activists, local politicians, and others. Critics charge that the growing scale of the efforts is producing negative ripple effects on other schools in these cities. In Chicago, the chief…

In the late 1980s, the labor leader Albert Shanker first articulated his vision of autonomous, teacher-formed "charter" schools. He lamented what he saw as a "lockstep" approach to K-12 education across the country that neglected the input of classroom teachers and failed to take into account students' individual needs. Now,…

This paper describes how a Tennessee school district is lessening the differences in achievement between inner-city schools and their suburban counterparts by bettering the teaching staffs in the inner-city schools. The story highlights two pillars of the almost-stunning progress achieved by what were once bottom-of-the-barrel schools. One, the…

The nation's best-known civil rights group has jumped into the fray over a controversial Nebraska law that would divide the 45,000-student Omaha school system into three separate districts, largely along racial and ethnic lines. In a lawsuit filed May 16 in US District Court in Omaha, Nebraska, the Omaha branch of the National Association for the…

As districts get more assertive in trying to jump-start achievement in their most troubled schools, San Francisco stands out for its emphasis on assistance. Rather than restructure schools, or dictate particular teaching models, the aim is to try first to remove the barriers to good instruction. Called the STAR, short for Students and Teachers…

Nebraska lawmakers the week of April 10, 2006 approved a hotly debated bill to break up the Omaha Public Schools--largely along racial and ethnic lines--under a plan that critics say amounts to state-sanctioned segregation and that likely will face a legal challenge. Passed April 13, 2006 in the last hours of the legislative session and signed the…

The Maryland legislature's success in blocking a state takeover of low-performing schools in Baltimore under the No Child Left Behind Act raises the prospect of political resistance in other states that might attempt such intervention. While no other state has yet invoked the federal law to take control of a school, the experience in Maryland…

The closely watched search for a new superintendent in Boston has taken such a rocky turn that the search committee's revised timeline now envisions January as the starting time for the new schools chief. The district's search committee had planned to select a group of finalists who would then go through public interviews before the school…

This article features graduates of the Chicago-based Academy for Urban School Leadership who are channeled directly into low-performing "turn around" schools where they receive guidance from accomplished veterans. Founded by venture capitalist Martin J. Koldyke, the 5-year-old nonprofit academy is independent of the 426,000-student Chicago system,…

This article presents the details of a conference discussing issues on NCLB implementation. The conference was based on a set of papers that included reviews of NCLB implementation in California, Colorado, Michigan, and New Jersey, as well as in three rural Kentucky districts and 36 big-city districts nationwide. Those analyses found that states…