KENT, Ohio—As finals approached, nearly 240 students in a computer lab worked through basic algebra problems at Kent State University, where they and more than 3,200 of their classmates had been deemed unprepared for college-level math. They struggled to solve for x in equations like 3x + 1 = 7—a skill students are meant to [...]

David Drew, a professor and former dean at Claremont Graduate University who has studied science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education for decades, recently wrote the book Stem the Tide: Reforming Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education in America. STEM has been a central focus of education reform by President Barack Obama. The Hechinger Report [...]

DENTON, Texas — One afternoon in mid-November, Jeff Arrington scattered 80 paper gingerbread men labeled with numbers across the floor of his high school disaster-response class. The numbers corresponded with the severity of injuries ranging from burns to hysterical blindness. His students had to categorize the “men” based on the level of medical attention each [...]

HACHIOJI, Japan – When he was 14 and living at home, no electronic device was safe from Soichiro Tsunakawa. He took apart cassette recorders, stereo speakers and all of his family’s mobile phones. He swears that when he put them back together, they always worked. The Sony Corporation apparently believes him. The seventh-year student here [...]

As part of our coverage of international education, reporter Blaine Harden traveled to Japan recently to learn more about a five-year program that educates a small number of students at 57 high-skill, hands-on national colleges of technology, known as Kosen. Kosen schools are helping to close a “skills gap”–which the United States faces as well–where graduates [...]

Is it really surprising that students in a tony New York suburb figured out a way, according to law-enforcement officials, to cheat on the SAT? When I first saw the headlines, I was slightly shocked at the audacity of a scam that allegedly involved a 19-year-old college student accepting large sums of money to take [...]

The extraordinary gulf between science and education was on sharp display this week. The New York Times’ Schools for Tomorrow conference and NBC’s Education Nation took place within a few days of each other, both in New York City. The Times’ conference emphasized the tremendous strides that have been made in educational technology—particularly in online [...]

Ask any high school biology instructor: Teaching kids about evolution is a science. Students’ reactions to the theory of how life evolved on earth are as diverse as the species on this planet. Teens tense up and become confrontational, their religious beliefs cause them to reject lessons about natural selection and adaptation outright, or they [...]