Returning from spring vacation, Dowan McNair-Lee's students find their desks in neat rows, facing forward. For the previous seven months, the 8th graders had sat in clusters, facing one another, to facilitate discussion. But janitors used the break to ready the classroom for the year-end tests that are only two weeks away. The new arrangement is…

The big clock in Dowan McNair-Lee's 8th grade classroom in the Stuart-Hobson Middle School is silent, but she can hear the minutes ticking away nonetheless. On this day, like any other, the clock is a constant reminder of how little time she has to prepare her students--for spring tests, and for high school and all that lies beyond it. The…

Even with nearly 50 schools shutting down at the end of this month, Chicago education officials have been barreling ahead with plans to groom a large crop of high-performing principals that they say represents the most ambitious effort the city has undertaken to upgrade its school leadership ranks. The goal, said Chicago schools CEO Barbara…

This article reports on how Delaware pushes to meet Race to the Top promises. The Delcastle Technical High School teachers are on the front lines of the push to deliver on promises that last year won Delaware, 10 other states, and the District of Columbia shares of the Race to the Top pie, the $4 billion competition that is driving much of the…

Using an article about labor leader Cesar Chavez's grape boycott and hunger strike, students at Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Washington, D.C., are doing a "close read," a skill prized by the new Common Core State Standards being put into practice in the District of Columbia. As an English/language arts teacher in the common-core era,…

Unlike traditional high school athletic teams, Unified Sports teams are designed to immerse students with intellectual disabilities in a facet of school culture that has largely eluded them. Nationwide, more than 2,000 schools in 42 states have the teams, where the ideal is for about half the athletes on each team to be students with intellectual…

Programs in teacher leadership have emerged as a growing number of teachers look to advance their careers and stay in the classroom. Exactly how many teacher-leadership degree programs exist is difficult to determine since no organization tracks them separately from other master's offerings in educational leadership. But a review of U.S. education…

An increase in teacher hiring in recent years has led some observers to posit a link to the waves of pink slips districts are now sending across the U.S. Between the 1999-2000 and the 2007-08 school years, the teacher force increased at more than double the rate of K-12 student enrollments. Hiring teachers to reduce class sizes remains a…

Every year, "Diplomas Count" takes a careful look at nationwide trends related to high graduation. This year, they have titled their report "Graduation by the Numbers--Putting Data to Work for Student Success." This year's research shows that today's graduation climate is a tough one, particularly for minority students and…

Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, a 750-student middle school in upper north Philadelphia, is a showcase for a comprehensive approach to dropout prevention. It produced such dramatic improvements in attendance, behavior, and course-passing rates last year that it's being tried this year in 11 more middle or high schools in Chicago, Los…