Education

The Newark story is part of a larger pattern in which Republican governors override local governments, especially urban ones, to serve both their ideology and their corporate patrons.

We have a standoff over testing as the chief means of determining the fate of the nation's schools. A new call for congressional hearings provides a useful option to go forward.

In the Public Interest and the American Federation of Teachers offer progressive education activists a new resource for pushing back against efforts to turn public schools into private profit centers.

The 'new populism that is defining the economic debate in 2014 is also firing a new movement to reject failed education policy. This movement has developed substantial new organizational capacity and a much more powerful voice.

Instead of addressing root causes of poverty that affect academic performance, students and teachers are required to take on evermore-stringent "no excuses" academic requirements. Is this education reform, or abuse?

Political disputes are supposed to be resolvable only when parties "meet in the middle" and agree. But with the issue of "education reform," only one of the disputing parties in the debate tends to be implored to seek compromise.

Congress needs to take an important step toward intervening with something that really would help our neediest children – early childhood education programs.

All the parental choice in the world is useless without the guarantee to the availability of good schools everywhere for all students. Until leaders start fighting for that, proclamations for "school choice" will ring hollow.

What if instead of giving a block of federal money to some students, the entire tuition of any student who wanted to go to a public college was paid for? A trending petition makes the money-saving case.