As the number of charter schools continues to grow, one facet of their autonomy--the ability to set and enforce independent disciplinary standards--has raised difficult questions about whether those schools are pushing out students who pose behavior or academic challenges and how their policies affect regular public schools. Research on the issue…

Louisiana is gearing up to open a new front in its push to expand educational choice, essentially creating a marketplace that lets students shop around for publicly funded courses--both online and face-to-face--beyond their schoolhouse doors. More than 30 providers already have stepped forward seeking state approval to take part in the Course…

Amid the cacophony of special interests fighting to be heard in statehouses and on Capitol Hill, a cadre of current and former chief state school officers is elbowing its way into the nation's education debate at a time when states are taking more control of K-12 education. A little more than a year old, Chiefs for Change is an invitation-only…

Jeb Bush left the Florida governor's office in 2007 with a legacy of having brought sweeping changes to his state's education system, through hard-edged policies that gave parents and students more choices and demanded more of schools. Today, that legacy seems poised to grow--and well beyond Florida. In state capitals across the country, numerous…

When 16 finalists come to Washington next week to make their final pitches in the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, most can expect to go home empty-handed. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in announcing the finalists last week, said that no more than $2 billion will be divided among "very few winners" when the awards are…

Dozens of schools are slated for aggressive interventions over the next three years under a new, multistate effort that aims to clear hurdles that have hindered previous attempts to improve underperforming schools. Education officials in Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and New York have agreed to partner with Mass Insight…

Efforts to reinvent public education in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina have drawn such interest that it's easy to lose sight of some very concrete changes that will become obvious over time: A generation of brand-new school buildings is rising across the city. New Orleans is in the early stages of a construction spree both to build and…

New Orleans will probably never be the same after Hurricane Katrina. But when it comes to schools, many educators and analysts say that might not be all bad. Both in Louisiana and beyond, the wreckage in the Big Easy has sparked thinking about how the city might reinvent its beleaguered school system, in difficult straits long before the storm was…

After years of trying to fix trouble schools one at a time, a number of states are weighing stronger measures for intervening in low-performing school districts. The shift is seen as a response to the federal No Child Left Behind Act. States are turning in a bigger way to district-level strategies, in part because as their own accountability…

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…