Teachers are trained to be mentors, counselors, and friends to a group of advisees, shepherding them through the term papers and broken hearts of adolescence. Each advisory group of about a dozen students stays together, with the same adviser, until graduation. By creating that kind of culture, with promising indicators that it is paying off…

This article reports the promising outcomes of a new mentoring program that helps novice teachers in New York City improve their quality of teaching and stem the number of those who leave. Calling the program "possibly the largest, most aggressive overhaul of teacher induction in the country," researchers of the New Teacher Center at the…

In Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Oakland, California and Philadelphia, to name a few cities where it has been active, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has emerged as a major player in K-12 in education issues. Its army of organizers has tackled everything from a lack of stop signs to such vexing issues as teacher…