New Englanders have been well-served by the region's higher education legacy. They tend to be better-educated and more prosperous than the rest of the nation, and the cultural life in their cities and towns is exceptionally rich. But New England dares not rest on its laurels. The growing demand for even greater levels of educational attainment in…

The superintendent of Coventry (Rhode Island) Schools explains how he converted annual town meetings from uncivil, interminable budget-slashing sessions to expressions of community support for student-centered reforms and a construction/renovation bond issue. The board grasped assessment difficulties by taking state-mandated tests for…

George Bernard Shaw famously quipped that "a Catholic university is a contradiction in terms." While the party-line response to Shaw is that the term "Catholic university" is instead a tautology, those who work, study, and teach at such institutions often find themselves pondering Shaw's oxymoron, asking themselves: how are…