Not even bad eyesight could keep Brandon Hong from realizing his boyhood dream of flying airplanes. The 22-year-old native of San Jose, Calif., graduated from Boston University in May, and now he’s stationed at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas for pilot training. Hong won an ROTC scholarship out of high school that, together with [...]

By Marisol Bello and Greg Toppo, USA TODAY Fewer than half the states routinely analyze suspicious numbers of erasures on standardized school tests, a key method of detecting cheating by teachers or their bosses. Erasure analysis launched a Georgia investigation that uncovered widespread cheating in Atlanta schools and has triggered probes in Washington, D.C., and [...]

Charter schools that post unusually high academic gains are often accused of having unfair advantages over traditional public schools, including more advantaged students and more private money at their disposal. A new and highly contentious study released today attempts to prove that the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), the largest charter-school network in the country, [...]

Richard Lee Colvin, editor of The Hechinger Report, recently spoke with Stephen Smith of American RadioWorks about some of 2010′s most interesting education stories — as well as what to be on the lookout for in 2011. Among the stories from 2010 that Colvin highlighted: the national conversation around the use of value-added data, especially [...]

The world wasn’t exactly shocked in 2009 when Alex Rodriguez’s name turned up on a list of 104 Major League Baseball players who had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Nor was anyone surprised to learn later that year that David Ortiz—the Red Sox’s “Big Papi,” and a six-time All Star—was on the same list. Except, [...]

Minnesota’s two-term governor Tim Pawlenty challenged the status quo of higher education when he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Thursday night. He talked about the role of the government and how we educate our students at the post-secondary level but the overall message was about efficiency. If it seemed unusual for a governor to be on a national television program touting alternative methods of higher education, his timing was perfect.

After a year of development, the much-anticipated “common core standards” for English and mathematics were unveiled Wednesday morning, just a day after states’ second-round applications were due in the federal Race to the Top competition. Officially named the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), the effort was spearheaded by the National Governors Association and the [...]

Thirty-five states and Washington, D.C. submitted applications today for the second round of President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top competition, with a few states deciding the race isn’t worth winning.