After five years of providing critical reviews of education-related reports by nonacademic think tanks, education professors Alex Molnar and Kevin G. Welner hope to expand their own reach with a new, broader research center. The new National Education Policy Center, based at Welner's academic home, the University of Colorado at Boulder, will…

Billionaire businessman Eli Broad, one of the country's most active philanthropists, founded the "Broad Superintendents Academy" in 2002 with an extraordinarily optimistic goal: Find leaders from both inside and outside education, train them, and have them occupying the superintendencies in a third of the 75 largest school districts--all in just…

A new video game in which the player stalks and shoots fellow students and teachers in school settings is drawing fire from school district officials. "School Shooter: North American Tour 2012" is a first-person game that allows the player to move around a school and collect points by killing defenseless students and teachers. The game,…

The rhetoric of education today tends to divide the world in two: between those who favor "reform" and those who don't. Many who consider themselves reformers say they stand in opposition to the "status quo." Some of them speak of the need to challenge the "education establishment," or the education bureaucracy. Many also describe their policies…

It's been a rough time for the image of K-12 virtual education. Studies in Colorado and Minnesota have suggested that full-time online students are struggling to match the achievement levels of their peers in brick-and-mortar schools. Articles in "The New York Times" questioned not only the academic results for students in virtual schools, but…

Teachers in Louisiana may soon think twice before sending a text message or e-mail to a student from a personal electronic device. A new state law requires all Louisiana districts to implement policies requiring documentation of every electronic interaction between teachers and students through a nonschool-issued device, such as a personal…

Depending on whom one asks, "21st-century skills" can mean different things: technology literacy, the ability to analyze and apply knowledge, a knack for working effectively with colleagues in teams. In what is probably its most visible form for educators, though, the term refers to the work of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the Tucson,…

This article describes the contents of a proposal released last week by a coalition that includes some of the most prominent critics of the No Child Left Behind Act. It asks Congress to scrap the accountability system at the center of the federal education law in favor of one that holds schools responsible for improving teacher training and…

A report calling for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the U.S. education and training system to help Americans compete in a global economy drew lavish praise and sharp criticism, foreshadowing what a heavy political lift its recommendations would likely be to carry out. Titled "Tough Choices or Tough Times," the report was unveiled at an all-day…

Reading First, which has already handed out nearly $5 billion in grants to some 1,700 districts and 5,600 schools, is designed to improve reading instruction in the nation's most disadvantaged schools through the use of research-based methods. However, a report conducted by the investigators for Inspector General John P. Higgins to evaluate…