Education in the United States has a foundational public purpose: to prepare students for effective citizenship. The idea that an educated and engaged citizenry is essential to the health of a democracy motivated the creation of government-run "common schools" in the early decades of the nation and remains an important value in modern…

Helping raise the Hispanic college graduation rate is an urgent goal, given the persistently high rate of poverty among Hispanic families, growth of the Hispanic population to account for one in five college-age Americans, and mounting concerns about racial and economic inequality. The question is, how? One potential strategy involves helping high…

Newark, New Jersey, once called "The Worst American City," is a city that has lost 36 percent of its population since 1930 (from 442,000 to 280,000) and is now more than half black and nearly 40 percent poor. It is a city, reported the "New York Times," where "budgeting is a Rube Goldberg morass with a deficit…