Interactive and expensive, whiteboards come to the classroom...

The GOP needs to enlist voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. . . .

AS American children head back to school, the parents of the most academically gifted students may feel a new optimism: according to a recent study, the federal No Child Left Behind law is acting like a miracle drug...

According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, a whopping 81 percent of students are now “proficient” in reading and another 77 percent are proficient in math...

Public education stands to receive some $100 billion from the enormous economic-stimulus package enacted last month by Congress, about one-eighth of the total...

President Obama’s address to Congress is earning plaudits for its honesty, candor, and can-do/will-do/must-do spirit...

Few doubt that we're living through profound changes on many fronts...

Back-to-school time, soaring fuel prices, and a wobbly economy are all upon us, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the papers are brimming with sad stories about schools getting slammed by skyrocketing costs and slumping tax revenues...

How refreshing to watch Wall Street reintroduced to “market discipline” this weekend, and how depressing to see “moral hazard” return by Tuesday night...

With the 2008 Summer Olympic Games receding in our memories, there’s still consternation in some parts about the fact that China bested the United States in the gold-medal count...

In his seminal 1961 book, Excellence, John W. Gardner posed the question, “can we be equal and excellent too?”...

Pope Benedict XVI was still in the air over the Atlantic when he addressed the dominant concern on the mind of many Catholics — and certainly the mainstream media: the clergy sex-abuse scandal...

Now that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has suspended his campaign, Senator John McCain’s nomination as the GOP’s presidential candidate is all but certain...

Senator Barack Obama sees a post-partisan future for America, but that doesn’t mean all divisions will disappear...

Mike Huckabee made news — and history — Tuesday when the New Hampshire affiliate of the National Education Association endorsed him for president in the upcoming primary — the first time it ever recommended a GOP candidate...

Senator Barack Obama unveiled his education plan last week, and used the opportunity to promote his presidential campaign theme of bringing people together...

A decade ago, when President Bill Clinton's "voluntary national test" proposal was crashing on the rocky shores of a Republican-controlled Congress, scholar Chester E. Finn, Jr. quipped that national testing was doomed because conservatives hate "national" and liberals hate "testing..."

The political strategy of George Miller and Buck McKeon, respectively the chairman and top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, has now come into full relief: to get an NCLB reauthorization bill through Congress by appeasing the suburbs...

Two weeks ago I escaped from Washington’s oppressive humidity and headed with my in-laws to New Hampshire’s Lake Sunapee...

Today’s Supreme Court decision striking down Louisville’s and Seattle’s race-based student assignment plans will surely lead to much gnashing of teeth, recriminations, and accusations of America slipping back to the era of Jim Crow...

If you enjoy political theater of the absurd, tune in to a House Education and Labor committee hearing Friday on “Mismanagement and Conflicts of Interest in the Reading First Program..."

In the past few weeks, conservative luminaries including Bill Bennett, Tommy Thompson, and Rod Paige have publicly endorsed national testing for K-12 education, giving some libertarians a fit. Consider Cato’s Neal McCluskey, for instance, who not only attacked national standards in his recent National Review Online piece but went after the entire education-reform strategy that rests on standards and testing...

The brouhaha over the federal Reading First program illustrates everything that’s wrong with government today — not the alleged improprieties, but a twisted government culture that prioritizes “proper procedures” over actual results and that looks for scapegoats and fall-guys when the going gets tough...

During the past few years, scores of impoverished inner-city schools have shuttered their doors...

History, science, and the arts are being de-emphasized by most schools in order to make room for teaching basic reading and math skills, according to a recent study …

Jay Greene is upset that nobody has addressed his concerns about the Common Core State Standards initiative...

[H]ow are policymakers and charter school authorizers doing on that score...

Districts are facing real spending cuts for the first time in decades. And once we get past the current challenges, our schools will be facing stiff competition for public funds from the retirement expenses of the baby boomers...

Many of us who support school choice do so because of our hope that competition will force recalcitrant districts and unions to reform. The theory of action goes something like this...

Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts last night jolted the political world, and may spell the end for President Obama’s health care legislation. . . .

On Friday, Tom Loveless and I published an op-ed in the New York Times that argued that our nation’s highest-achieving students are only making minimal gains in the era of NCLB, while low-achieving students have made huge strides since 2000...

Ron Reagan talks with Mike Petrilli about what the Republicans need to do to get younger. . . .

At the heart of our abiding commitment to the idea of public education is Horace Mann’s ideal of the “common school”: a place whose doors are open to everybody, and where all children, regardless of social class or race or ethnic heritage, can come to learn and play and grow up together. . . .

The teachers unions are learning that even their friends within the Democratic party won't defend the indefensible, such as protecting bad instructors from losing their jobs...

Brand-new test score results for the District of Columbia Public Schools show big gains...

A month ago, I wondered what Sonia Sotomayor might think about teacher tests, as the more rigorous ones typically have a “disparate impact” on minorities; African-American and Hispanic candidates fail them at much higher rates than whites do...

This week has provided a nice natural experiment about which kinds of studies the media finds newsworthy...

I finally watched Charlie Wilson’s War last night (we have a toddler at home; we’re not in the movie-theater stage of our life!)...

New York state’s test scores in math were released yesterday, and not surprisingly they were up, up, up...

The Post asked education and political experts to assess the president's plan for D.C. students...

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute appraises the current policy landscape and its main players, and outlines the ideal federal role in K-12 education...

Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right...

He’s widely (and fairly) seen as the “consensus candidate,” bridging the divides between two camps within the Democratic Party (the reformers and the establishment)...

The former IBM CEO gets no support for his proposal to eliminate the nation’s 15,000 school boards from Fordham trustee Diane Ravitch in this Forbes.com piece...

That’s my take on the new Marcus Winters/Jay Greene/Julie Trivitt study on the impact of high-stakes testing on low-stakes subjects in Florida...