A new college-grant program slipped into a pending federal budget bill could ultimately influence course offerings at high schools across the country and has stirred a debate about creeping federal authority over curricula. The legislation would create a $3.7 billion annual program of grants aimed at students from low-income families who have…

In this article, the author reports the plans of Department of Education to release proposed regulations on testing flexibility for certain students with disabilities, which will guide states in the lengthy process of developing new assessments. In April, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced that 2 percent of students in special…

Evidence is mounting that federal employees and their agents may have directed or even pressured states to choose specific assessments, consultants, and the criteria for evaluating core reading programs as conditions for getting funding under the Reading First initiative, possibly in violation of federal law. "Education Week" found such…

State leaders have just begun counting the billions of dollars it will take for schools in the Gulf Coast region to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Schools around the country, meanwhile, continue to welcome the estimated 300,000-plus students displaced by the storm--some 50,000 of whom were learning that their home schools would likely be closed…

The Department of Education's announcement of new leeway in meeting federal teacher-quality demands was praised as welcome relief by many education leaders. But others, including two pivotal congressional Democrats, charged that the action would lower expectations for teachers in rural communities. Facing widespread complaints about the…