For the past decade and a half, the fight to improve America's schools has been fought largely on two fronts: academic standards as one battleground, and accountability the other, with the issue of mandatory testing adding heat to a very public--and increasingly politicized--debate. The questions for policymakers and educators are as direct as…

During the past year, teachers have pushed their technology skills to the next level, improving their understanding of how to use learning management systems effectively; integrating digital curricula, online assessments, and interactive games into learning; and upgrading their skills for using modern communication tools such as Zoom. This new…

The COVID-19 pandemic has school leaders searching for ways to keep the fiscal ship afloat amid plummeting revenues, unexpected costs, and state and local budget uncertainty. This second of three Quality Counts 2020 installments offers lessons from past economic downturns and survey data capturing district-level views of the current crisis, along…

With the debut of common assessments less than two years away, states and districts are worried about the accountability systems that hinge on those tests. A growing chorus of policy groups is urging more flexibility in how states evaluate teachers, label schools, and enforce other high-stakes consequences during what's likely to be a messy…

On June 23, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits gender discrimination in any federally financed education program or activity. Title IX is far-reaching, but the law is most often associated with school and college athletics. Title IX allows schools to prove their athletic…

While the Obama administration's plan to offer states relief from parts of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act--if they agree to embrace unspecified education redesign priorities--has drawn kudos from some quarters, it isn't sitting well in others. Officials in a number of states have praised the idea as an opportunity for badly needed relief from…

Where their teacher-quality proposals are concerned, the fates of the 11 states that have bid for waivers of core principles of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act appear to depend largely on how the peer reviewers--and, ultimately, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan--interpret their applications. The U.S. Department of Education's criteria…

The author reports on a measure to renew the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which faces steep political hurdles. Leaders of the Senate education committee still aim to push a bipartisan revision of the much-criticized No Child Left Behind Act through Congress by year's end, in time to stave off the Obama administration's move to…

Luis Carlos Ayala treks up and down hilly driveways in a local neighborhood on a recent weeknight, going door to door to deliver his short campaign spiel and a flier. Even though the 18,650-student Pasadena Unified district serves a locale of more than 202,300 residents, Mr. Ayala aims to reach voters in an area of only 28,900 for this race, as a…

The fractious debate over how much schools can counteract poverty's impact on children is far from settled, but a recently published collection of research strongly suggests that until policymakers and educators confront deepening economic and social disparities, poor children will increasingly miss out on finding a path to upward social mobility.…

As the governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007, Mitt Romney championed aggressive education policies later embraced by the Obama administration and by other states. But for most of his second run at the Republican presidential nomination, voters have heard little about his education record in Massachusetts or initiatives that Mr. Romney was…

Few would quarrel with the goal of increasing parents' and families' engagement in education in the name of school improvement. But there is far less consensus on what that engagement should look like--and on how educators and policymakers should be promoting it. Those questions are evident in the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which…

President Barack Obama is putting new money to save educators' jobs and help states refurbish aging school facilities at the center of a nearly $450 billion plan to jump-start the sluggish economy. The author talks about the president's plan which is sure to face hurdles in a politically polarized Washington where one house of Congress is…

From the White House to Capitol Hill, the winners in this week's elections won't have much time to savor their victories. Even as federal policymakers sort out the political landscape, the remainder of 2012 and the early months of 2013 are likely to be dominated by divisive, unresolved issues with broad consequences for K-12 and higher…

Education leaders in Congress are signaling that they're prepared to collaborate with the White House on a long-stalled reauthorization of the main federal law for K-12 education, after President Barack Obama sought to move education back to the top of the national agenda in his State of the Union address last week. Precollegiate policy is widely…