This 17th edition of "Education Week's" annual "Quality Counts" report takes aim at an issue freighted with emotional as well as policy implications: the impact of a school's social and disciplinary environment on students' ability to learn and on the teachers and administrators tasked with guiding them. National initiatives to improve schools…

Fifty years after "Brown v Board of Education" inequalities in public education are evident in the disproportionate numbers of Black and Latino students who are held back, often do not graduate from high school, or are removed from school by unforgiving zero tolerance discipline policies. The National Center for Educational Statistics…