States are pushing ahead with efforts to make sweeping changes to education policy through the Race to the Top program, despite some of them having seen individual schools and districts back out of the process because of concerns over the time and money required to make those plans a reality. The Obama administration has envisioned Race to the…

With the conclusion of the second round of the federal Race to the Top competition, states across the country--winners and losers alike--are vowing to move forward with ambitious plans to reshape teacher-evaluation systems, fix struggling schools, revamp antiquated data systems, and make other changes aimed at raising student achievement. Yet…

State-level battles over changes in education policy have shifted in many places from legislative chambers to courthouses, as unions and other critics of new laws challenge them on the grounds that they violate state constitutions and worker contracts. Republican governors and lawmakers--their ranks bolstered by the 2010 elections--won passage…

Math teachers from across the country, already facing enormous pressure to raise scores on high-stakes tests, should embrace other, more creative forms of assessment as a way to improve instruction, peers urge. Assessment, far from being a dirty-word, was a major theme at the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.…

A mantra in recent years has been to blame the teachers' unions for many of the problems that beset public education. Americans only need look at Wisconsin, where the governor and lawmakers pushed through legislation curtailing the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other public employees. This special report examines the attempts by a…

For decades, when elected officials, researchers, educators, and parents have wanted a clear-eyed measure of what students know in a range of subjects, they have turned to an authoritative source: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Now the country stands poised to enter a new testing era. All but two states have agreed to work…

The deadline pressure states faced in submitting applications in the federal Race to the Top competition is now being felt at the local level, as school districts scurry to craft work plans that show how they will execute ambitious changes in education policy. Eleven states, plus the District of Columbia, have won a combined $4 billion this year…

Many of the states that claim to have large shares of their students reaching proficiency in reading and mathematics under the No Child Left Behind Act have set less stringent standards for meeting that threshold than lower-performing states, a new federal study finds. The study, "Mapping 2005 State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP…

Neal Frey reads textbooks for a living, a job he finds singularly fulfilling. For more than two decades, he had labored on behalf of Educational Research Analysts, a conservative Christian textbook-reviewing organization in Longview, Texas, founded by the famously outspoken husband-and-wife team of Mel Gabler and Norma Gabler. Since the early…