In recent years, the federal Department of Education (ED), and state and local educational agencies (SEAs and LEAs, respectively) have been increasing the emphasis on the need to engage parents and families of students in their children's education. Initiatives have sprung up across the fifty states and Washington, D.C. to help officials at the…

Can an academic institution be truly free if it relies on government funding? Federal dollars mean federal mandates, and those mandates grow increasingly draconian. More and more, they stifle debate on open questions, demand denial of verifiable scientific truths, eliminate due process for students accused of misdeeds by other students, or insist…

On an Election Day filled with dozens of state races and ballot measures with big implications for the nation's public schools, state teachers' unions and charter school champions had plenty to cheer in the aftermath, even as tax measures that would help pay for schools suffered setbacks in some places. Union efforts were instrumental in…

The recent wave of new legislation affecting public school teachers has its roots, in part, in the budget shortfalls that have challenged states for the past several years. The first signs of fiscal troubles for many states became evident in 2008, and most instituted midyear budget reductions in 2009. In response, the U.S. Congress passed the…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Obama Sets Timeline for NCLB Revamp: President Calls on Congress to Send Him an Education Reform Bill "Before…

This brief will highlight three major findings from Southeast Center for Teaching Quality (SECTQ's) teacher surveys and interviews with more than 160 educators entitled "Unfulfilled Promise: Ensuring High Quality Teachers for Our Nation's Students". It will also profile two districts' approaches to meeting the requirements of NCLB and…

Since the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act or the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, much has been said and written about the law by a variety of education observers, practitioners, and policymakers from both sides of the political aisle. With support from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Z. Smith Reynolds foundations,…

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) was the first significant attempt to retool the nation's workforce development programs since the early 1980s. Titles I-V of the WIA do the following things: (1) establish the purposes, goals and operational framework of a workforce development system designed to increase participants' employment,…