WASHINGTON — One day after taking what he called a “shellacking” at the hands of voters, President Barack Obama stood in the East Room of the White House looking for examples of issues where he’ll find common ground over the next two years. Republicans will hold the House gavel in the 112th session, beginning in January [...]

Waiting for “Superman,” a new documentary by Davis Guggenheim, isn’t out yet, but it’s already been dissected. It’s also at the heart of already heated education-reform debates nationally. The movie chronicles the saga of five families forced to rely on winning lotteries to get their children into charter schools in Los Angeles, New York City, [...]

How to evaluate teachers and link their pay to their performance has been a big topic of discussion in education for the past several months. Veteran education journalist Chris Connell is at Vanderbilt University in Nashville where he will be live-tweeting Monday and Tuesday for The Hechinger Report from a conference on these topics organized [...]

In Los Angeles, the best teachers often go unrecognized and unrewarded, according to an article entitled “No gold stars for successful L.A. teachers” in the Los Angeles Times. Most are scattered across the city and work in obscurity, writes Jason Felch, the article’s author. “No one asks them their secrets. Most of the time, no [...]

Want to know which states have applied for the second round of Race to the Top? Or who is going to win? We’ve got an interactive map and more.

A divided State Board of Education in Texas last week approved new landmark curriculum standards for U.S. history and other social studies courses that mandates what will be taught in all of the state’s elementary, middle and high schools. The new standards will change the way history, government and economics are taught, while also encouraging [...]

State Senator Mike Johnston, a Democrat from Denver, was influential in pushing a new teacher effectiveness bill signed into law this week in the state of Colorado after a month of drama and controversy. The law ties teacher and principal evaluations to student academic growth and it changes the way teachers are granted tenure. Johnston, a [...]

Margaret Spellings, former U.S. Education Secretary during George W. Bush’s second term, still has strong feelings about the No Child Left Behind Act that will forever be associated with the Bush administration. Spellings, who now runs her own public policy and strategic consulting firm, has been writing and speaking about her concerns over President Barack [...]

Teachers have been having a tough time lately. Their unions are under pressure to accept pay cuts and fewer benefits. States are threatening massive teacher layoffs in response to budget deficits. There’s a major push to make teachers more effective, with how teachers are trained, evaluated, tenured and compensated all on the table. In addition, [...]

Our “mile-wide, inch-deep” curricula compare poorly with other nations’ focus on fewer topics.

If the United States is going to remain economically competitive and a leader in new technologies, the capacity of its high school and college graduates to do math must improve. Two decades of international comparisons show that the longer American students are in school, the further they fall behind their counterparts in other developed nations. [...]

We asked more than 20 education experts how they defined “rigor.” Click through the slideshow below to see what they had to say.

Good math teachers are hard to find. Some school districts have resorted to recruiting math teachers from overseas, while others have offered perks such as signing bonuses, housing assistance and student loan forgiveness. In attempting to address the shortage of math teachers, much of the focus has been on recruiting – providing financial incentives, alternative [...]

The familiar high school math sequence – Algebra I, geometry, Algebra II, trigonometry – is so ingrained that it’s easy to forget there are other ways to learn mathematics. In fact, if we look at countries that outperform the United States on international math assessments like the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), [...]

For decades, business leaders, educators and politicians have argued that U.S. students should study more advanced levels of math. Concerned about competition from countries like China and India, these advocates raise alarm about the shortage of Americans trained for jobs in engineering and other high-tech fields, arguing that in a knowledge economy even entry-level manufacturing jobs require greater levels of math competency. But is there merit to such claims?

In the United States, two-thirds of all 4-year-olds and almost half of all 3-year-olds are cared for outside the home before they start kindergarten. They may be in public or private school, family day care, for-profit childcare centers, or programs run by faith-based organizations or nonprofits. Children from the poorest families are eligible for the [...]

We’ve summarized five studies that show preschool helps most students, but with some caveats.

Do you know the difference between preschool, Head Start, religious school, child care? We lay out the details.