Caught between extraordinary public expectations and relatively modest constitutional authority, U.S. presidents historically have fashioned all sorts of mechanisms--executive orders, proclamations, memoranda--by which to move their objectives forward. William Howell asserts that under President Barack Obama's administration, presidential…

Charter schools now educate nearly 3 million students in 43 states and the District of Columbia--more than 6 percent of the total K-12 public-school enrollment. Yet some 25 years after the first charter school opened in Minnesota, the merits of charters still incite debate among educators and the public. What is not often debated is that charter…

School districts held an exclusive franchise on public education services until 1991, when Minnesota passed the first law permitting public charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded, authorized by various agencies designated in public law, but independently managed. They operate outside district control, and most can draw students from…

The big battles over school vouchers in American education have focused on programs serving low-income children who live in urban areas. Milwaukee's program, begun in 1990, is the biggest and oldest in the country, and the District of Columbia effort, funded by the federal government, has been the most carefully studied. Both have been focal…

A major debate among education reformers over how best to reduce the achievement gap broke out during the 2008 presidential campaign. Most advocates on both sides backed Barack Obama, but they urged him to pursue different policies. The Education Equality Project (EEP) supported a continuation of accountability and other school-focused reforms.…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the federal school-accountability law, is widely held to have accomplished one good thing: require states to publish test-score results in math and reading for each school in grades 3 through 8 and again in grade 10. The results appear to be telling parents whether their child's school is doing a better job than the…

Describes the facts and legal basis of federal court decisions in "Zelman v. Simmons-Harris," a case before the U.S. Supreme Court to determine if Cleveland's school voucher program violates the Establish Clause. Discusses the possible educational, legal, and political consequences of the Court's decision. (On June 27, 2002, the Supreme…