This 22nd edition of "Quality Counts" offers a fresh take on the annual top-to-bottom ranking of the nation's school systems on a state-by-state basis published by "Education Week". The first of three "Quality Counts" reports being rolled out over the course of the year, "Grading the States" aims to…

The 2016 edition of "Education Week's" long-­running "Technology Counts" report combines in-depth reporting and insight from an original national survey to reveal teachers' confidence levels in ed tech, how teachers approach integrating technology into the classroom, and decision-making behind tech products. Contents include:…

With common standards in science set to be finalized in March, states will soon face the dilemma of embracing them as their own or going their own way, raising the question of how common the Next Generation Science Standards will ultimately prove to be. The 26 "lead state partners" helping to develop the K-12 standards have agreed to…

After months of arduous negotiation and partisan squabbling, states across the country have produced budgets for the new fiscal year that in many cases will bring deep cuts to state spending, including money for schools. The budget blueprints adopted by numerous states were postscripts to divisive legislative sessions that saw newly elected…

As the country's K-12 student population grows more ethnically diverse, students of color face the troubling possibility of never having a teacher who looks like them. According to federal data, more than 40 percent of students are nonwhite, compared to just 17 percent of teachers, and that mismatch appears to be on the rise. But a new project is…

The use of analytic tools to predict student performance is exploding in higher education, and experts say the tools show even more promise for K-12 schools, in everything from teacher placement to dropout prevention. Use of such statistical techniques is hindered in precollegiate schools, however, by a lack of researchers trained to help…

When Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire announced recently that she wants to take control of education policy in her state by creating a new, Cabinet-level schools position that answers to her, she set the stage for a political fight--and revived a perennial debate. Governors, elected state schools chiefs, and, to some extent, state boards…

Blended learning--the mix of virtual education and face-to-face instruction--is evolving quickly in schools across the country, generating a variety of different models. This special report, the second in a three-part 2012-13 series on virtual education, examines several of those approaches and aims to identify what is working and where…

California legislators swiftly passed a budget bill last week aimed at sheltering school busing dollars from a midyear budget cut many districts and advocates said particularly hurt rural school systems, along with urban districts with desegregation plans. While the measure, which Gov. Jerry Brown was expected to sign into law, would restore $248…

Not long after he took office in January, California Governor Jerry Brown presented residents of his state with a simple, stark plan for correcting the state's massive budget imbalance. The Democrat called for making deep and painful cuts to programs across government, while sparing schools. To raise revenue, he proposed allowing the public to…

California is poised to become the first state to unmask the extent to which English-language learners (ELLs) languish in public schools for years without ever reaching fluency. Under a measure that received broad, bipartisan support from the legislature, the state education department would be required to break out and report data annually on…

Stubbornly high college remediation rates have revealed a painful equation: High school completion does not equal college readiness. That disconnection has prompted national leaders to focus like never before on figuring out how to ensure that high school graduates are truly ready to succeed in college. In that quest, a California program is often…

With Barack Obama making history by becoming the United States' first mixed-race president, his inauguration is calling attention to the nation's growing multiracial population, whose youngest members are showing up with increasing frequency at schoolhouse doors. Yet while the growth of the U.S. population of children with mixed-race backgrounds…

The author reports on a review of state policies by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, which raises questions about the validity of the use of home-language surveys as a step to identify students eligible for special help in learning English. While it's ubiquitous in schools across the country, the practice of educators'…

A handful of recession-ravaged states have kicked off a new fiscal year without balanced budgets, leaving public school educators in limbo as they struggled to manage spending amid dwindling resources and political bickering over unprecedented budget gaps. The crisis remains most severe in California, which, as of last week, faced a $26.3 billion…