This article discusses the withdrawal of the United States government from educational reform in Iraq. It has however, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, awarded a two-year National Capacity Development contract, which is aimed at helping Iraq's government ministries to function better. This article discusses how security…

This article presents a report from the Education Trust stating the growing gap in school funding between wealthy and poor districts in most states. In the report, the Washington-based Education Trust blames cash-strapped states for the disparities, which average just more than $1,300 per student across the country. The Education Trust makes…

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…

Congress should pay for the development of a national teacher test, using performance to judge accomplishment, and the test results should be incorporated into state licensing requirements, a report released May 24 argues. Prepared by a panel of the National Academy of Education, the 112-page guide calls on federal and state policymakers to…

School leaders have joined a six-state effort by the National Governors Association (NGA) aimed at making Advanced Placement (AP) classes more widely available, recruiting nontraditional students to enroll, and working to make sure those students succeed in the college-level courses. Participants say the NGA initiative is showing impressive early…

New Orleans will probably never be the same after Hurricane Katrina. But when it comes to schools, many educators and analysts say that might not be all bad. Both in Louisiana and beyond, the wreckage in the Big Easy has sparked thinking about how the city might reinvent its beleaguered school system, in difficult straits long before the storm was…

Auditing school districts on a regular basis hasn't been part of the comptroller's job description in New York for 20 years. That began to change 18 months ago, when accusations arose about expenses made by a former administrator in Roslyn, a 3,300-student system in an affluent Long Island community. Questionable spending has come to light in more…

President Bush wants to fashion several new education programs, including pricey items central to his oft-touted high school agenda. But he also is proposing for the first time since he entered the White House to cut the overall budget of the U.S. Department of Education. And he's asking Congress to give up a lot--48 line items, to be exact. The…

Private school students with special needs are among the intended beneficiaries of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Parents and private school advocates hope changes in the newest version of the law will make it easier for them to get school district services without having to enroll in public schools. Under the…

This article describes how the rising cost of health insurance is being picked as the top budget concern of school businesses. These data were the result of a survey conducted by the Association of School Business Officials International. Schools report that the cost of insuring employees is outpacing increases in state and local budgets that…

President Bush's plan to expand the No Child Left Behind Act's demands at the high school level--a top priority of his second-term domestic agenda--is "not likely" to move forward on Capitol Hill in 2005, a senior House Republican on education issues predicted. Representative Michael N. Castle, R-Delaware, the chairman of the House…

Three years after a federal law required states to collect a host of education data, much of that information and more will now be available in one place--giving the public a newfound resource and giving educators headaches over how schools can be compared. On a free Web site to be launched on March 29, 2005, a public-private partnership will post…

When students put down their pencils at the end of Connecticut's testing each year, another intensive process begins. Hundreds of trained evaluators work day and night for about a month to score the written responses. Although expensive, the use of open-ended questions drives the kind of instruction that state leaders say they want in their…

This article reports on a nationally-watched case by educators and families which is scheduled to be heard by the Florida Supreme Court. The court is to decide whether Opportunity Scholarships, available to students enrolled in Florida's persistently lowest-rated public schools, run afoul of a prohibition on using public money in religious…

In this article, the author reports some 3,800 near-simultaneous "house parties" organized throughout Pennsylvania to call on their federal lawmakers to put more money into education. The parties, in which three-quarters of them were organized by teachers such as Jane Dugdale, are the main election-season event of a new coalition of…