This article reports that education will be on the ballot November 4, even if the subject hasn't been on voters' minds much during the 2008 campaign season. The results of the elections are likely to have a significant impact on the way schools are financed, governed, and held accountable for the academic performance of their students. At the…

Charter school authorizers are getting "choosier" about which applications for schools they will accept and are basing decisions not to renew charters more on student-achievement issues than previously recognized, an analysis by a pro-charter organization finds. At the same time, the report says, almost half of authorizers, especially smaller…

This article reports how President Bush's new blueprint for the No Child Left Behind Act will create a partisan debate on educational strategies. In its plans for NCLB, the administration said it wants private and charter schools to create competition that would spur improvement in substandard schools. Democrats, however, have their own priorities…

As chronically underperforming schools around the country get to the point that the No Child Left Behind Act requires dramatic action, very few have gone the charter route. But Gompers Charter Middle School is one of three such San Diego schools that were shut down and reopened as charters. This article briefly discusses the steps this school took…

After years of tense relations between teachers' unions and the growing charter school movement, unions are stepping up their efforts to organize educators at the independent public schools. So far, the results of the increased organizing activity-which stretches from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to California appear modest. But it remains to be…

This article describes opinions about what ails U.S. schools. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has a lot to say about education in the United States--what's wrong with it and how to fix it. A national authority on charters and an unabashed champion of the idea, the Fordham Foundation is getting a grounding in reality and appears to be the only…

Nearly four years after a front-page story in "The New York Times" sparked a fierce debate by suggesting that charter school students nationally were lagging academically behind their peers in regular public schools, the national testing program that informed the controversy has generated far more data for researchers and advocates to scrutinize.…

This article reports how the 10 "pilot" schools conceived by the Boston district in 1994 are seeing more students through graduation than regular high schools in the area. Conceived a decade ago as the district's response to charter schools, pilot schools have won praise from educators, business leaders, and community groups for…

After nearly eight months on the job, Superintendent David L. Brewer III has rolled out his strategy for improving student achievement in the 708,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Three new, reform-minded members also have been sworn in on the school board. But so far, the momentum for improving high schools in the nation's…

In 2004, High Tech High, a charter school chain based in San Diego, California, became the state's first charter-management organization (CMO) to gain state approval to operate its own teacher-credentialing program. It is not stopping there. In August, it will cut the ribbon on the High Tech High graduate school of education, which appears to be…

The NewSchools Venture Fund is a non-profit organization with a mission to "transform public education through powerful ideas and passionate entrepreneurs", support education entrepreneurs who are working to better serve disadvantaged children, and provide "thought leadership" to help bring about "broad systematic…

This article reports on a Texas charter school network which aims to expand the ranks of disadvantaged students who graduate, not just from high school, but from college as well. To earn a high school diploma, each student at YES (short for Youth Engaged in Service) Prep Public Schools, a growing Houston-area network of charters that predominantly…

Over the next few weeks, dozens of schools will open across New Orleans for the second full academic year since Hurricane Katrina. As many as 33,000 children are expected to report to one of the campuses in the city's patchwork of charter and traditional public schools. Unlike last fall--when many schools opened without textbooks, functioning…

As students have returned to Alice M. Harte Elementary School, they have found their old school far from the way they left it on the last school day before Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the city. The building may look much the same as it did on August 26, 2006 but half the faces here are new--from principals to teachers to students. The…

A master's-degree program blends courses in education and business to prepare leaders for the entrepreneurial world of charter schooling. Verree D. Laughlin wants to launch a network of small, community-oriented charter schools, starting with one near the Mexican border in Yuma, Arizona. Katheryn Crayton-Shay recently took the reins of a…