Pascal D. Forgione Jr., who has been the superintendent of the Austin Independent School District since August 1999, will retire in June. In the rough-and-tumble world of the urban superintendency, such long tenures are a relative rarity. As he prepares to leave the stage, Pat Forgione is being praised locally and nationally for his leadership in…

"Quality Counts 2008" reintroduces state grades in six key areas, from the Chance-for-Success Index to the teaching profession. This special issue of "Education Week" includes the following articles: (1) Human Resources a Weak Spot (Lynn Olson); (2) Teacher Salaries, Looking at Comparable Jobs (Christopher B. Swanson); (3) Data…

This article reports on the action taken by Texas officials to maintain the integrity of their testing program. Responding to a potential cheating scandal uncovered by a recent newspaper investigation, Texas officials announced a sweeping review of test security and plans for a new monitoring scheme for the state accountability system, which has…

This article reports on the increasing attempts to identify what have been dubbed high-flying schools and figure out what makes them tick to bring all students to higher levels of achievement. A free Web site, launched by the New York City-based Standard & Poor's, began providing a tool that enables users to identify schools that do better…

Faced with a conflict between state and federal laws, Texas officials have come down on the side of their own law and set up a possible showdown with the U.S. government over millions of dollars in education aid. In determining which schools and districts were meeting annual goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the state last February…

State and local officials are slowly untangling complicated webs of accountability, testing, and graduation policies, hoping to give thousands of students displaced by Hurricane Katrina a better handle on their academic standing. While officials in Texas, Tennessee, and Alabama offered some guidance to such students, school leaders in…