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…

Back in 2008, it wasn't clear just where candidate Barack Obama's heart lay when it came to the big issues facing schools. Although Mr. Obama had been a community organizer, a law professor, and a state legislator, the junior U.S. senator from Illinois didn't have a long record on K-12 issues, and he rarely spoke about them in his presidential…

The tenor of discussions held in Washington last week by negotiators rewriting federal rules on teacher preparation underscored deep-seated philosophical divisions within the field, including the thorny issue of how much responsibility schools of education should bear for producing effective teachers. Though the panelists did reach compromises on…

Education advocates are already bracing for protracted budget battles in the coming year, even as they sort the winners and losers in the bill approved by Congress late last week financing the U.S. Department of Education and the rest of the federal government through September. The hard-fought agreement followed months of wrangling between…

The federal program providing billions of dollars to help states and districts close or remake some of their worst-performing schools remains a work in progress after two years, with more than 1,200 turnaround efforts under way but still no definitive verdict on its effectiveness. The School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, supercharged by a…

The author reports on the federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2012 in which President Barack Obama singled out education as an area crucial to the country's economic future. He called for bolstering programs he deems critical to his vision for a renewed Elementary and Secondary Education Act and proposed new ones in research, early-childhood…

More than a dozen education programs--including high-profile efforts focused on literacy, teaching, and learning--face the prospect of a permanent federal funding loss after they were chopped from a stopgap spending measure signed into law by President Barack Obama last week. The temporary spending law, intended to keep the government running…

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives appear determined to make deep cuts to education and related programs in the temporary spending bill that would keep the federal government operating for the rest of the fiscal year, even as President Barack Obama seeks a modest funding boost next year. That sets up a fiscal face-off in the…

In this article, the author talks about a report from Education Sector, a Washington think tank, which concludes that little information exists on whether the $3 billion spent annually by the federal government on teacher quality as part of the No Child Left Behind Act has improved the effectiveness of U.S. educators. The Teacher and Principal…

The author talks about a recent report from the nonprofit group "Grantmakers for Education" which finds that philanthropies nationwide are increasingly getting engaged with education policy matters at the local, state, and federal levels through a range of activities, in recognition of the powerful reach of government in setting…

The author reports on House and Senate bills that take different stances toward funding formula-grant programs and Obama administration initiatives. Key education programs, including Title I grants for disadvantaged students and aid for special education, would get flat funding for the 2012 fiscal year under a measure approved Sept. 21 by the…

If the competition for a slice of $4 billion in federal Race to the Top Fund money were a school class, Colorado would be one of the kids sitting up front, furiously taking notes, and leaping up to answer every one of the teacher's questions. Officials here began plotting their strategy for receiving one of the coveted grants nearly as soon as the…

The author reports on a review of state policies by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, which raises questions about the validity of the use of home-language surveys as a step to identify students eligible for special help in learning English. While it's ubiquitous in schools across the country, the practice of educators'…

After 39 applicants went home losers from the first round of the Race to the Top competition, many states regrouped and raised the stakes for round two--changing laws to revamp teacher evaluations, drumming up more support from districts and teachers' unions, and getting more aggressive about turning around low-performing schools. The authors…

In a move that could reshape academic assessment in nearly every corner of the country, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded $330 million in grants to collaboratives of states to design better ways of measuring student learning. The grants, awarded Sept. 2, went to two groups of states that sought the money under the federal Race to the…