For years, the St. Louis school district has experienced the convergence of two trend lines school superintendents hope never to see: rising employee-pension costs and falling student enrollment. Despite years of fully funding its share of the teacher-pension plan, the proportion of the St. Louis district's budget tied up in paying benefits for…

This article reports that a group of superintendents and secondary school educators in Massachusetts gathered to discuss how online courses might help offset budget cuts. Maryland state officials say their virtual Advanced Placement classes are a cost-effective way to get high-quality coursework to more students. And the largest state-sponsored…

The 2008 state legislative season launches this month under a fiscal cloud in a number of states, where ambitious education initiatives--including expanded pre-K programs, college- or career-preparation efforts, and improved teacher pay--may end up being balanced against gloomy revenue projections. A revenue slowdown--foreshadowed last month in…

With food and fuel prices increasing sharply, food and nutrition directors in school districts around the country are finding themselves facing some uncomfortable choices. In some districts, school lunch menus are being pared down to fewer selections, instead of the array of healthy options districts would like to offer. In other areas, canned and…

Texas schools would count the salaries of librarians--but not those of nurses, guidance counselors, or bus drivers--as instructional expenses under proposed rules that would define how districts would comply with a new state mandate to spend 65 percent of their budgets on classroom costs. The rules are designed to make it easier for districts to…

This year's "Quality Counts" report, the 15th edition of this annual report produced through the joint efforts of the "Education Week" newsroom and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, arrives at a time of continued fiscal anxiety and education policy ferment in the wake of what has been widely described as the…

Kentucky schools are poised to get their biggest state spending boost in more than a decade, but educators say it won't be enough to counter a lawsuit arguing the state inadequately finances its K-12 schools. In the legisltative session that concluded earlier this month, Kentucky lawmakers passed a two-year budget with $7.9 billion for K-12…

This article reports on starkly contrasting portraits of special education that the justices are sure to hear on the first day of the new U.S. Supreme Court term. In a case from New York City, the 1.1 million-student district argues that school officials made every attempt to provide an appropriate education plan under the federal Individuals with…

When cobbling together the landmark No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, Congress quietly tacked on an unusual provision that says the law does not require states or school districts "to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this act." Little noticed at the time and lifted directly from an earlier version of the law enacted…