Since the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), test-based accountability has been an organizing principle--perhaps "the" organizing principle--of efforts to improve American schools. But lately, accountability has been under fire from many critics, including Common Core opponents and those calling for more multifaceted…

American education has problems, almost everyone is willing to concede, but many think those problems are mostly concentrated in America's large urban school districts. In the elite suburbs, where wealthy and politically influential people tend to live, the schools are assumed to be world-class. Unfortunately, what everyone knows is wrong. Even…

This article features Khan Academy which offers an online math program and short video lectures embedded in the "module", or math concept, that fit students' goals. By now, more than 1 million people have watched the online video in which Salman Khan--a charming MIT math whiz, Harvard Business School graduate, and former Boston hedge-fund…

Data-driven instruction began its spread across the country about a decade ago, in the footsteps of the No Child Left Behind requirement that schools administer yearly achievement tests. Those tests didn't help teachers spot and backfill learning gaps, though. Scores came back after everyone had moved on to the next grade, and anyway, the tests…

This article discusses Michelle Rhee's style of leadership--as steely as the sound of her peekaboo high heels on a linoleum-tile hallway--which has angered much of Washington, D.C., and baffled the rest since she arrived as schools chancellor in June 2007. But it is also helping her gain control of a school system that has defied management for…

In just the last ten years, goaded by broad and still unsettled cultural shifts, education practices have changed dramatically. Schools are no longer just recording and analyzing inputs--dollars spent, number of days of instruction, numbers of students per teacher--but pushing their data-gathering and analysis efforts into the brave new world of…

There can be little doubt that there is wide variation in the rigor and quality of state standards and assessments. Moreover, it is clear that the vast majority of states have set their academic achievement bar far lower than federal standards, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Since No Child Left Behind (NCLB)…