A state law, which helped Tennessee win Race to the Top money, pushed schools to implement a system that had limited pilot-testing. Education officials in Tennessee are taking flak from teachers and unions for rushing the implementation of the new teacher-evaluation system that will eventually undergird tenure decisions--a move, some worry, that…

Forced into an uneasy balancing act between their members and the president they helped elect, the national teachers' unions are responding to the Obama administration's teacher-effectiveness agenda in notably different ways. Publicly at least, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel has hewed closely to the union's internal…

States are pushing ahead with efforts to make sweeping changes to education policy through the Race to the Top program, despite some of them having seen individual schools and districts back out of the process because of concerns over the time and money required to make those plans a reality. The Obama administration has envisioned Race to the…

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said last week that he envisions a significant new emphasis on federal incentives for high-performing schools, districts, and states in the renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), expected to be taken up by Congress as early as next year. Duncan said the Department of Education is…