Search

As the number of charter schools continues to grow, one facet of their autonomy--the ability to set and enforce independent disciplinary standards--has raised difficult questions about whether those schools are pushing out students who pose behavior or academic challenges and how their policies affect regular public schools. Research on the issue is sparse, and data on expulsions and disciplinary incidents at charter schools paint a nuanced picture nationwide. But in a few urban districts where high discipline rates at charter schools have drawn scrutiny, school officials have recently taken steps aimed at ensuring that students in both charter and other public schools are treated fairly. The promise and appeal of charter schools hinges partly on the idea that their freedom from many of the state and district policies that govern regular public schools allows for more effective schools. Some experts on charters, though, say increased accountability on disciplinary issues in the sector is overdue.

A mantra in recent years has been to blame the teachers' unions for many of the problems that beset public education. Americans only need look at Wisconsin, where the governor and lawmakers pushed through legislation curtailing the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other public employees. This special report examines the attempts by a small but growing number of districts and unions to work together to enhance the knowledge and skills of teachers and, in turn, improve the achievement of schoolchildren. Articles in this supplement include: (1) "New Attitudes Shaping Labor-District Relationships" (Stephen Sawchuk); (2) "Contract Yields New Teacher-Evaluation System" (Stephen Sawchuk); (3) "Value-Added Formulas Strain Collaboration" (Sarah D. Sparks); (4) "Union-District Collaboration a Never-Ending Process" (Stephen Sawchuk); (5) "States Urged to Promote Union-District Cooperation" (Sean Cavanagh); and (6) "Memphis Collaboration Is Poised to Bear Fruit" (Christina A. Samuels).

As concern mounts that U.S. students lack sufficient understanding of science and related fields, it has become increasingly clear that schools can't tackle the challenge alone. This special report explores the field often called "informal science education," which is gaining broader recognition for its role in helping young people acquire scientific knowledge and skills. Opportunities abound outside the classroom to learn about science, and to inspire a passion for it. Zoos and science museums, robotics clubs, science competitions, and online games are just a few of the options to engage American youths. In this special report, the authors examine what informal science education looks like in practice, and what one knows about its impact, its potential, and the challenges it faces.

This article reports that in 1996, Alabama officials approved the "4 x 4" plan, which made their state the first in the country to require students to complete four years, or four credits each, of math and science for high school graduation. Other states have since followed suit, with policymakers arguing that higher standards are necessary to gird students for increasing demands from colleges and employers and to cultivate a capable workforce. Alabama officials decided last year to set an even loftier goal: All entering 9th graders in 2009 must pursue an "advanced" diploma, meaning they have to complete Algebra 2, including trigonometry content, unless their families let them opt out of that mandate. That requirement will mean that Alabama, which has traditionally lagged near the bottom of all states on national tests of academic progress, has established one of the more demanding math standards in the country. Yet Alabama's experience with its 4 x 4 plan underscores the challenges states face in implementing such requirements. Different public schools in the state have taken very different approaches to meeting the mandates, depending on such factors as course scheduling and the needs of their student populations. In some Alabama schools, students meet the four-year requirement by taking at least one math and science class each year, 9th through 12th grades. In schools that use block scheduling, students take extended classes lasting about 100 minutes. They receive one credit for a half-year of classwork. That allows some students to complete four years of math and science in two or three academic years. In some schools, students may not take math during certain half-year terms, as long as they are progressing toward obtaining the necessary four credits before graduation.

This article highlights the study which illustrates how an age-old board games that incorporate numbers and counting have led to better understanding of numbers by young students. Few family rituals have as fixed a place in the American household, and in the popular imagination, as board games, those impromptu or regularly scheduled contests played by parents and children on kitchen tables and living room floors. Now, a growing body of research is revealing the potential benefits of using board games in the classroom to strengthen the mathematics skills of children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Researchers revealed that exposing youngsters from low-income backgrounds to a simple board game that involves counting produced large and lasting gains in their understanding of numbers. The researchers found that at the end of the study, preschoolers' knowledge of math in four different areas of number sense had increased greatly.

A popular humorist and avowed mathphobe once declared that in real life, there's no such thing as algebra. Kathie Wilson knows better. Most of the students in her 8th grade class will be thrust into algebra, the definitive course that heralds the beginning of high school mathematics, next school year. The problem: Many of them are about three years below grade level. Ms. Wilson's job is to help them quickly catch up. Every year, scores of middle and high school math teachers face the same challenge. The push to ensure that all students take introductory algebra and do so earlier has gained widespread acceptance in U.S. schools since "A Nation at Risk" advocated strengthening graduation requirements in math. That movement has been driven in recent years by rising state and local high school standards, which in turn have forced higher expectations for courses taught in middle schools. Beginning algebra is now typically being taught in the 8th rather than the 9th grade. Now, after years of raising the standards, some policymakers are moving to help thousands of middle and early high school algebra students who cannot keep up. Last year, for the first time, California state officials approved an entire set of math programs devoted specifically to "algebra readiness," or raising the skills of students likely to struggle in that subject. Similar algebra-readiness materials are being used in other states and districts around the country. The strategy Ms. Wilson is trying in her classroom uses a program aimed at rebuilding students' foundational math skills, normally taught from 2nd through 7th grade, over the course of a single academic year, while introducing the students to basic algebraic principles and language. Created by the MIND Research Institute, the program relies heavily on visual explanations of math in textbooks and computer software. The approach is meant to engage and motivate students, and build a bridge between elementary math and algebra. It is also designed to help students of different ability levels, including those with shaky English-language skills. Program developers say the visual model helps students connect different math concepts and remember them.

The influence of a federal report calling for a more orderly approach to teaching mathematics in the early grades will hinge largely on whether its message is accepted by the nation's diverse and often fiercely divided math community. Released this week, the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel recommends that schools present elementary and middle school math in a better-defined manner, in contrast to the jumble of strategies now used in states and school districts. The report states that the delivery system in mathematics education--the system that translates mathematical knowledge into value and ability for the next generation--is broken and must be fixed.

American officials lament U.S. students' mediocre skills in math and science, and warn that China, with its firm academic emphasis on those subjects and its enormous student population, stands to reap economic rewards from American complacency. They suggest reforming math and science education in the U.S. to more closely resemble the systems traditionally used in China. Yet China's government is, in contrast, seeking to inject more American-style flexibility into its math and science curriculum, by placing less emphasis on exams and more focus on cultivating students' creative and analytical skills, which Chinese school officials believe are lacking. Chinese teachers are being encouraged to move away from lectures, drills, and memorization in class, and to invite more discussion and student-led activity. Schools are adding more elective courses and independent research projects. Textbooks are being rewritten. Chinese officials also say they are committed to increasing opportunities for students, especially those from poor, rural areas. Differences between American and Chinese cultural traditions concerning education, educational texts, and teacher training are discussed.

Neal Frey reads textbooks for a living, a job he finds singularly fulfilling. For more than two decades, he had labored on behalf of Educational Research Analysts, a conservative Christian textbook-reviewing organization in Longview, Texas, founded by the famously outspoken husband-and-wife team of Mel Gabler and Norma Gabler. Since the early 1960s, the organization has sought to rid textbooks of factual errors, perceived liberal bias, and what its reviewers otherwise deem inappropriate content, mostly by exhorting publishers and state officials to make the changes they want. When Mr. Gabler died in 2004 at age 89, and Mrs. Gabler grew ill, it fell to their friend and protege, the 61-year-old Frey, to keep the reviews coming. Under Frey's direction, assisted by his wife, Judy, the textbook shop has steadily evolved from the Gabler's era. A former college professor, he works in near-anonymity, making his points through the faxes and newsletters he sends to subscribers and textbook decisionmakers. What remains unchanged, however, is the organization's commitment to conservatism and the discipline of textbook review. These are not abstract convictions. He understands the forces that guide the multibillion-dollar textbook industry and dictate which printed materials end up in classrooms, and he believes the meticulous, often tedious process he follows allows him to bend that process to his liking.

In this article, the author talks about Neal Frey, who for more than two decades has labored on behalf of Educational Research Analysts, a conservative Christian textbook-reviewing organization in Longview, Texas that was founded by the famously outspoken husband-and-wife team of Mel and Norma Gabler. When Mr. Gabler died at the age of 89, and Mrs. Gabler grew ill, it fell to their friend and protege, the 61-year-old Frey, to keep the reviews coming. Under the direction of Frey, who is assisted by his wife, Judy, the textbook shop has steadily evolved from the Gablers' era. While Mel and Norma issued textbook reviews as near-celebrities, storming public hearings and sitting for interviews with Phil Donahue and "60 Minutes," Frey, a former college professor, works in near-anonymity, making his points through the faxes and newsletters he sends to subscribers and textbook decisionmakers. Frey, like the Gablers, manages to kindle all sorts of debate. To his detractors, his stated pursuit of factual errors obscures his larger goal: to strip textbooks of any content that does not suit his deeply conservative worldview. And because he works in Texas--a vital market for educational publishers--his modest operation can have an enormous sway over the written materials used in classrooms across the country, his critics point out.

While reliable estimates of American Indian students' college participation are scarce (in part because their numbers are so low), the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school in Santa Fe has taken steps to make postsecondary education the norm, rather than the exception, even while serving many disadvantaged youths. Overall, the academic proficiency of the 700-student school's students also ranks well above the recorded averages of other BIA facilities, which serve some of the nation's most disadvantaged students. In large measure, the Santa Fe Indian school is accomplishing what many schools serving academically at risk children long to do, encourage their students early on to consider college and then give them the support to get there.

Tribal leaders in Cherokee established the payment program known as the "per capita". All enrolled members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee--adults and children alike--receive yearly sums. Upon graduation, students from the tribal-run school system are eligible to receive lump-sum payments, with the amount $36,967.78 per person. The money comes from the revenues of Harrah's Cherokee Casino & Hotel, which is owned and operated by the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. Cherokee leaders hoped the payment system would provide young adults with a financial head start, as well as an incentive to graduate. Yet for some teenagers, the only guarantee associated with the per-capita seems to be that they will spend it--and quickly. Because of such, the main concern now for all officials of the Cherokee Central school system is how to inform their students about wise spending of the sums they receive. They have launched classes to encourage students to invest their per-capita money, or at least take prudent care of it. Tribal and school officials are thinking of making such lessons mandatory, so that all students are at least given access to financial advice.

Backers of the common-core academic standards have worked for years to secure the support of a diverse collection of elected officials, academic scholars, and school employees. Now they're ramping up efforts to court a different and potentially critically important audience: parents. A number of national organizations are churning out written and online materials, videos, and even public service announcements aimed at explaining the Common Core State Standards to parents, in plain language, and building support for the new guidelines, which have been adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia. Some of those organizations, including the National Parent Teacher Association, are also staging workshops for parents in schools, community centers, churches, colleges, YMCAs, and other settings around the country. The PTA, which has 5 million members, says that it has already sponsored presentations for about 35,000 parents and members of the general public. Another organization engaged in the parent outreach, the Council of the Great City Schools, in Washington, plans to produce written guides to the standards, called "parent road maps," in 10 languages--including Korean, Russian, Arabic, Haitian Creole, and Mandarin--spoken in the districts it represents. Road maps in English and Spanish are already circulating in the big-city districts served by the organization. As those efforts roll forward, the organizations are also tailoring their messages to address parents' fears and misgivings about the common core: that its standards are too high or too low, that it will skew test scores or hurt students' academic progress, or even that it will hinder their chances of getting admitted to college.

This year's presidential campaign offers at least one unequivocal contrast on education issues: The Republican candidate supports private school vouchers, and the Democratic incumbent does not. But at the state and local levels, Democrats' views on vouchers are more diverse and nuanced than what is suggested by the party's national platform, which makes no mention of private school choice, or by the policies of the Obama administration, which has consistently opposed providing public money for private school costs. Some Democrats see vouchers as offering an escape hatch for students who would otherwise be forced to stay in academically struggling public schools. Others say publicly funded private school scholarships provide opportunities for students to obtain a religious education they otherwise could not afford. Still others in the party accept vouchers when they are relatively narrowly defined, limiting eligibility to special education students, for instance, or restricting participation to impoverished students in substandard schools. The strongest supporters of private school choice cite those instances of bipartisan backing as evidence of the concept's broad appeal, which they predict will grow among Democrats over time. Others see little evidence that vouchers are, or will ever become, broadly accepted among Democrats. They say the tuition aid unfairly redirects money away from public schools into the private sector and, in the view of many in the party, fosters inequity.

One of the most vexing questions about charter schools--when low-performing ones should be shut down--is receiving new attention, amid concerns that lax and inconsistent standards for closing them will undermine the public's confidence in the sector. Over the past few years, a growing number of researchers, policymakers, and charter school backers have called for removing obstacles to closing academically struggling schools, though many barriers remain. Numerous states have approved laws in recent years that have raised or clarified standards for charter school performance, while also establishing policies to make it easier for charters to open and secure facilities and public funding. Even so, state and local policies vary greatly in their expectations for charter schools, and in the standards they set for authorizers--the state, local, or independent entities typically charged with approving charters and overseeing their performance. According to a report released this year, the nationwide rate of closure of charters schools up for renewal has actually fallen over the past three years, which could be interpreted as a sign of improved quality, weaker oversight, or some combination of both. Another recent estimate shows that the percentage of charters in different states that have shut their doors varies widely--from zero to 5 percent in some states to well over 20 percent in others. Debates about the standards for closing struggling charters are nothing new, either in the context of broader policy discussions or in communities weighing the performance of individual schools. But the issue has received more intense focus lately from pro-charter groups that say they want to ensure that the sector, which has grown fairly steadily for two decades, is held to high standards.

A handful of prominent charter school networks that have won praise for their academic performance and unorthodox models are expanding to new parts of the country, in some cases after receiving recruiting pitches from state and local officials determined to bring proven operators into their communities. Until now, organizations such as Aspire Public Schools and Rocketship Education, both with headquarters in California, and BASIS Schools Inc. of Arizona, which have been held up as worthy of emulation, have focused their work within their states' boundaries. But in recent months, those nonprofit organizations and others have announced plans for incremental growth, the success of which will determine whether they venture into other cities and states in the years to follow. The slow growth of those charter school operators underscores a sorting process in the charter school community. Some states and cities have resolved to be selective in choosing the organizations they allow to take over struggling schools or start new ones. Leaders of a number of highly regarded charter organizations, meanwhile, say they will only move to new locations that offer certain attributes--such as favorable financial conditions or a strong degree of independence.

Few would quarrel with the goal of increasing parents' and families' engagement in education in the name of school improvement. But there is far less consensus on what that engagement should look like--and on how educators and policymakers should be promoting it. Those questions are evident in the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which requires that all districts receiving more than $500,000 in Title I aid for disadvantaged students must devote at least 1 percent of those funds to family-engagement activities, and that they must distribute 95 percent of that money to Title I schools. The law also requires Title I schools to have written parent-involvement policies and school-parent compacts, describing how parents should be involved in schools and how they will take part in improving student achievement. Both sets of policies are to be developed and approved by parents. Many researchers and advocates, however, say the current law has not lived up even to expectations on that front. Some say the NCLB law encourages a focus on compliance, rather than fostering creative and sustained cooperation between schools and parents. Others say it offers districts and schools too little guidance on how to engage parents in a meaningful way. And some argue that superintendents and principals--already saddled with NCLB's other mandates, particularly in testing--have little incentive to take parent engagement seriously.

A year ago, Republicans piled up record victories in state elections on promises that they would keep taxes low and cut government spending--including money going to education. Now, elected officials and other partisans are laying the foundation for arguments they will take to the electorate next year that depict the cuts delivered by many governors and lawmakers since the midterm elections as either necessary and justified, or shortsighted and harmful to schools. State leaders and advocacy groups have previewed those debates over the past few months during a series of off-year-election battles focused heavily on K-12 issues, particularly teacher collective bargaining and spending on schools. The clashes included a closely watched referendum in Colorado, where voters rejected a tax-hike plan. Backers of the plan had argued it would help make up for substantial recent budget cuts. Opponents countered that the tax hikes would stymie job growth and increase economic instability. The author discusses how school budget cuts imposed by governors and state lawmakers in the past year loom as an electoral issue in 2012.

Maryland was one of 11 states, plus the District of Columbia, to win an award through the Race to the Top competition, a $4 billion grant program--backed by the Obama administration and funded by the 2009 economic-stimulus package--that was meant to foster school improvement and innovation. Along with 44 other states and the District of Columbia, Maryland, which won $250 million through the competition, agreed to adopt the common standards, a decision that earned it extra points in the scoring for the grants. The standards were developed through the Common Core State Standards Initiative, an effort led by organizations representing the nation's governors and schools chiefs. Since then, two consortia of states have begun crafting common assessments and curricular support to supplement the standards, with $360 million in Race to the Top money. States could also earn points in the competition for proposing professional development in areas such as helping schools use data wisely and tailoring such training to needs identified in school employees' evaluations. The author reports on how Maryland is using Race to the Top resources for extensive professional development in its push for common academic standards.

The frenetic legislative season now finished or wrapping up in many states has brought big changes to education policy, some forged through bipartisan compromise, others only after hyperpartisan battles. From teacher issues to vouchers, the 2011 state legislative season saw widespread action on education. Republican leaders who swept into office last fall wasted no time pushing through ambitious and often controversial education agendas. Their hardest-fought victories include the passage of laws that curb teachers' collective bargaining rights and tie educators' tenure, advancement, and pay to their performance, including their ability to improve student test scores. Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker's successful push to strip teachers and most other public employees of many bargaining powers drew strong objections from Democrats and massive protests from teachers and other public workers, who took part in some of the largest demonstrations the state had seen since the Vietnam War. Similar Republican-backed laws that passed in Indiana, Ohio, and Idaho also drew major protests. Yet many states, with much less fanfare, passed significant measures in areas including the creation or expansion of voucher programs, academic standards, teacher certification, and charter school expansion--in some cases with the backing of both major political parties.

States are finally arriving at the "funding cliff"--the point where about $100 billion in federal economic-stimulus aid for education runs out. The loss seems certain to compound severe budget woes and could mean thousands of school layoffs and the elimination of popular programs and services in districts across the country. The bulk of that one-time aid, part of $814 billion provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in 2009, went to save the jobs of teachers and other school employees, as state and local tax bases and other revenue sources collapsed during the prolonged economic downturn of the past few years. But states are required to have spent the majority of their stimulus aid by September, and most will burn through it even sooner, by the end of the current academic year, budget experts say. Stimulus aid has played a major role in staving off deep cuts in K-12 systems, said Michael Griffith, a senior policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States, in Denver. And while congressional lawmakers had hoped to cushion the fall for states through their approval last year of a $10 billion Education Jobs Fund, state officials say that money is not sufficient to make up for lost stimulus dollars.

A pair of Ohio school districts, a short drive down Interstate 70 from each other, share similar goals. Each wants to improve student achievement by strengthening curriculum and instruction and giving teachers and principals the tools to make it happen. But the Huber Heights and Brookville school systems diverge in their approach to meeting those targets in one important respect: One of them elected to take part in the federal Race to the Top initiative, while the other did not. The experiences of the two districts, located outside Dayton, reflect the challenges that school systems in Ohio and other winning Race to the Top states are likely to face in the years ahead. Districts that signed on to the program will have to meet a number of academic and administrative mandates as part of their states' plans, but will receive federal money to help them. The districts that opted not to participate will have more freedom to pursue their own agendas, but without that same infusion of money and other resources. This article reports on how districts divide on race to top but share similar goal.

Massive protests have been the norm in Wisconsin, since Gov. Scott Walker unveiled a plan to strip many collective bargaining rights from teachers and most other public employees. GOP elected officials are pursuing similar measures in Ohio and other states. But in the DeForest district, like some others around the state, collective bargaining, while often difficult, has produced agreements that generally satisfied both sides. Gov. Walker's plan would upend existing relationships, a number of superintendents and local teachers' union leaders say, and create the potential for more division. It would give district leaders far more power to determine everything from teachers' health-care coverage to school assignments and class sizes--matters that would fall outside the scope of collective bargaining. The furor over the governor's plan has left administrators, as well as teachers and parents, with an unfamiliar and still-evolving challenge: how to work through the upheaval and go about the business of educating students--while trying to hold their school communities together. Officials in the 3,250-student district and members of the teachers' union, an affiliate of the 98,000-member Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) and the National Education Association, use an approach known as consensus bargaining in their contract negotiations. They begin by laying out broad principles and gradually moving into contract specifics. Votes on various provisions are taken by hand, with participants signaling thumbs up, thumbs down, or thumbs sideways. A single thumbs-down was sufficient to nix a provision, so participants work to reach an accord in which all parties have at least a neutral, or sideways, position. Under the governor's plan, health-insurance decisions at the local level would no longer be subject to bargaining, meaning district officials could set health-coverage policy on their own. Gov. Walker argues that requiring teachers to pay for pensions--most chip in nothing now--and restricting collective bargaining on health care and other issues will help districts save more than enough money to offset $834 million in reductions in state aid to schools over the coming two years. A higher number of the DeForest district's 258 teachers than usual have indicated that they plan to retire after this year, citing concerns about either losing or having to pay more for retirement benefits, because of shrinking local budgets and potential reductions created by the governor's proposal.

The rhetoric of education today tends to divide the world in two: between those who favor "reform" and those who don't. Many who consider themselves reformers say they stand in opposition to the "status quo." Some of them speak of the need to challenge the "education establishment," or the education bureaucracy. Many also describe their policies as putting the needs of children and students first, as opposed to the ideas favored by their critics, who by implication are focused mostly on the concerns of adults. A set of stock phrases, sound bites, and buzzwords has come to dominate the public discourse on education, summoned reflexively, it often seems, by elected officials and advocates who speak a shared, accepted language. The current lexicon groups one set of policies--which generally includes support for charter schools, tougher standards and testing, evaluating and paying teachers based on performance, and challenges to teachers' unions on traditional job protections--under the favorable heading of reform. Resistance to those ideas is often branded as misguided at best, and obstructionist at worst. Using rhetoric to frame policies in a flattering or negative light is, of course, as old as politics itself. But the pervasiveness of today's education language, often echoed uncritically in the media, is striking, and reflects the extent to which self-described supporters of reform have seized the rhetorical high ground in making their case. References to "reform" and "status quo" fill policy papers churned out by advocacy groups and opinion pieces from newspaper editorial boards. They color the speeches of politicians in both parties, including President Barack Obama and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and Republicans like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, as well as the remarks of forceful and charismatic advocates, such as former District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. Others say that using terms like "reform" and "status quo" is appropriate, because they aptly describe the challenges facing U.S. schools and the difficult work necessary to overcome obstacles to change. It's not language chosen to divide people, but to challenge everybody and to put a question to public and policymakers: "What are you willing to do differently?"

Gov. Scott Walker's sweeping proposal to scale back collective bargaining rights for most public employees in Wisconsin has sparked a rancorous standoff with teachers across the state--and fueled speculation about whether similar plans will gain traction in other parts of the country. But as massive demonstrations played out in Madison--an estimated 70,000 protesters came to the state Capitol one day last week--local school leaders were questioning one of the arguments behind the governor's proposal: that it will help cash-strapped districts financially in the years ahead. And while some in district leadership have voiced support for modifying collective bargaining arrangements, they fear the governor's plans could create lasting discord in school systems where relations between teachers and administrators have been relatively harmonious. Wisconsin has been at the center of a pitched political battle for nearly two weeks, since Gov. Walker proposed far-reaching changes to public workers' benefits and job protections. Those changes included raising educators' required contributions to their pensions and health insurance--a proposal the state's largest teachers' union says it is willing to accept. But more controversially, the governor and leaders of the GOP-controlled legislature have called for curtailing many bargaining rights for teachers and most other public employees, a plan that government workers have taken to the streets to oppose. Teachers also have joined demonstrations in Ohio and Indiana over Republican proposals to curb unions' collective bargaining power. Numerous other states have taken up similar measures, along with other proposals to require teachers to pay more for benefits, curb their tenure protections, and set limits on how unions can raise money. In announcing his plan, the governor pledged to give local governments, including school districts, "the tools to offset what may be reductions in state aid," including changes to collective bargaining rules. Gov. Walker predicted that without making changes to public workers' pensions, health insurance, and negotiating rights, state and local governments would have to lay off thousands of workers, including teachers. A number of officials representing school boards and districts agree that while their pension and health-care costs would likely decrease under the governor's plan, overall savings are difficult to predict--particularly those stemming from curbs to collective bargaining--and that the cumulative amount would almost certainly be insufficient to make up for anticipated cuts in state funding.

Teachers' unions find themselves on the defensive in states across the country, as governors and lawmakers press forward with proposals to target job protections and benefits that elected officials contend the public can no longer afford academically or financially. Many of those efforts are being driven by newly elected Republicans, who have traditionally drawn political opposition from teachers' organizations--and did in last year's midterm elections--but who made historic gains in those state contests. The GOP now controls more state legislative seats than it has in more than 80 years, and it has the majority in both lawmaking chambers in 25 states. In addition, Republicans emerged from November's races with control of 29 governor's offices, erasing Democrats' previous majority in state executive branches. Many officeholders are calling for new attempts to change how teachers are paid and evaluated, and for reductions in tenure protections, efforts that were also pursued in several states last year, which have often drawn skeptical responses from unions. State leaders are also vowing to cut spending and close budget shortfalls, and many governors and lawmakers see reductions in state-funded pension systems for teachers as a part of that. A top aide to Alabama Senate President Pro Tempore Del Marsh, a Republican, said the measure was designed to ensure that state resources are not used for political activity.

Jeb Bush left the Florida governor's office in 2007 with a legacy of having brought sweeping changes to his state's education system, through hard-edged policies that gave parents and students more choices and demanded more of schools. Today, that legacy seems poised to grow--and well beyond Florida. In state capitals across the country, numerous lawmakers and officeholders say they are determined to follow the ambitious, and often polarizing, education blueprint fashioned by Mr. Bush, a Republican, during his two terms as Florida's governor. Many conservatives specifically cite Mr. Bush, who chairs a foundation that seeks to explain and expand his Florida model, as the intellectual architect of policies to support vouchers and charter schools, improved and more aggressive testing, and school grading systems, which they hope to replicate. As the brother of the nation's 43rd president and the son of its 41st, Mr. Bush draws attention for reasons that have nothing to do with his record governing the nation's fourth-most-populous state. Since his second and final term as governor ended four years ago, Mr. Bush has shown less appetite for the national spotlight than for the intricacies of education policy. Not long after leaving office, he launched the Foundation for Excellence in Education, based in Tallahassee, Florida. It lists as one of its main goals helping governors, legislators, and others pursue policy changes in areas such as improving the use of data, teacher effectiveness, and school choice. He also chairs another group, the Foundation for Florida's Future, which focuses on education issues in his home state, specifically.

The big incoming crop of Republican governors and state lawmakers will inherit bleak conditions for funding school programs and face potentially vexing decisions about whether to pursue the ambitious education proposals crafted by their predecessors, often with bipartisan support. Many of those victorious GOP candidates campaigned on time-tested conservative platforms, emphasizing a return to local control over education and resistance to what they see as state and federal overreach. But they will also take office during a dynamic time for education policy. Many states have pursued major changes to policies for charter schools, teacher evaluation, and other areas over the past two years, with backing from both Democrats and Republicans. States across the country have also agreed to adopt common academic standards and to use federal dollars to pursue bold school improvement efforts through the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, financed through the 2009 federal economic-stimulus package. Whether the new state leaders would attempt to upend those agreements and coalitions remains unclear. Newly elected officials might find it politically difficult to take recently approved policies in a different direction.

The massive flow of federal funding into schools has created a new and unfamiliar political dynamic in state elections this fall, with many candidates voicing concerns about the government involvement while acknowledging its role in saving jobs, propping up budgets, and supporting innovations in education. State elected officials have a long history of opposing federal programs that they fear will encroach on their authority to set school policy. But while some conservative candidates have railed against federal stimulus funding, arguing that it will heap future obligations on states, other contenders for governor and schools superintendent back that assistance, essentially agreeing with the Obama administration's position that it will boost employment and school quality. The November elections--in which 37 governors' seats, legislative races in 46 states, and seven state superintendent spots are up for grabs--are playing out amid an unprecedented flow of federal aid to states and schools.

Winners of the Investing in Innovation (i3) competition scrambled to make a deadline to find private-sector matches for their multimillion-dollar federal awards, meeting the challenge through a mix of cash grants and donations of pricey equipment and services, and by rechanneling previous grants to new purposes. The 49 organizations selected to receive a combined $650 million in "i3" grants under the federal economic-stimulus program had until Sept. 8 to get matches equal to 20 percent of their awards, which ranged from $5 million to $50 million. The deadline rush proved exhausting for many winners, who said they spent the final days negotiating with Education Department officials or navigating individual foundations' and other organizations' rules for giving and receiving the money intended to spur innovative education.

With the conclusion of the second round of the federal Race to the Top competition, states across the country--winners and losers alike--are vowing to move forward with ambitious plans to reshape teacher-evaluation systems, fix struggling schools, revamp antiquated data systems, and make other changes aimed at raising student achievement. Yet predicting the long-term impact of those proposals is difficult. States will attempt to make complicated and controversial policy changes, in some cases with uncertain levels of support from powerful interest groups. Nine states and the District of Columbia were named winners in the second round of the competition last week, and they will receive a combined $3.4 billion in federal funding. They join the two states, Delaware and Tennessee, that were winners in the first round in March, bringing the total funding for the 12 Race to the Top award recipients to $4 billion. The winners of the $4 billion now face the task of meeting the goals and deadlines spelled out in their applications, which they acknowledge will be challenging. The winners have four years to spend the money to implement their plans.

Ask a parent, politician, or school board member to describe the ideal qualifications of a math teacher, and most would probably rank having a college major in that subject high on the list. Yet when it comes to improving student learning in elementary and middle school, research shows that the value of that academic credential is limited--at best. On the one hand, recent nationwide test scores show middle school students taught by a teacher with an undergraduate mathematics major scoring better, on average, in that subject than those whose teachers did not have that degree. Yet many observers view those results with caution, saying the weight of evidence does not show a connection between teachers' having majored in math and higher student math achievement, particularly before high school. That disconnect might seem counterintuitive, given the broad concern among policymakers about improving math teachers' credentials, and about how states and school districts can improve educators' professional training and skills. But researchers who have studied school and college math instruction say that while math content is obviously essential for teachers, educators also need a more refined set of classroom-ready tools than a college math major, on its own, is likely to offer.

This article reports that Derek Cummings and Justin Lessler, Johns Hopkins University epidemiologists, have come to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) to give a live webinar on the spread of swine flu. This web-based audio and video presentation is one of many efforts by universities and science organizations to put K-12 students in direct contact with research scientists, in the hope of giving young people a taste of advanced scientific work and making it less intimidating and more appealing. The live event, held last month, is part of a collection of online features on a theme: "Swine Online." They're housed on a Johns Hopkins CTY Web site, www.cogito.org, which offers resources created by university staff members and research scientists themselves, filtered by scientific topic. Some of Cogito's offerings are open to anyone. Others, like the webinar, are restricted to students, many of them elite performers recommended by schools and programs like the CTY, which works with top students. Other organizations, such as the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, have established similar student-to-scientist programs in recent years, some using Web-based technologies. Those resources can give young people the kind of access to university scientists normally granted to graduate and undergraduate students.

Three years after calling for a reordering of elementary and middle school math curricula, the nation's largest group of math teachers is urging a new approach to high school instruction, one that aims to build students' ability to choose and apply the most effective problem-solving techniques, in the classroom and in life. Cultivating those skills will make math more useful, and more meaningful, to students, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) argues in a document scheduled for release this week. The high school document has both a different purpose and a different structure. It is not a suggested set of content standards, but rather a framework that attempts to show how skills that the NCTM considers essential--reasoning and sense-making--can be promoted across high school math. The NCTM's high school guidelines explain how reasoning and sense-making can be applied in different areas of math. They also offer numerous examples of how such applications might play out in the classroom, presented through model dialogues between teachers and students covering math lessons.

The latest draft of proposed common academic standards offers more-detailed expectations of what students should know and be able to do by the end of high school in math and language arts, but also notes that some decisions about curricula should be left to individual states and schools. The new version, released for public comment last week, is meant to provide guidelines for determining "college and career readiness" for students around the country. This article discusses praises and criticism made on the new draft.

As the most concerted venture to craft common academic standards in more than a decade rolls forward, the process has drawn criticism from those who say too much of the nitty-gritty work is taking place behind closed doors. The organizations leading the effort--the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), both based in Washington--have assigned a pair of working groups to oversee the initial writing of the documents. Those two panels have produced draft standards for college and career readiness in mathematics and English-language arts. More-detailed guidelines for grades K-12 are expected later. The deliberations have so far been deemed "confidential" and closed to the public by the NGA and CCSSO, although these groups contend that there will be several opportunities for public input in the weeks and months ahead. The NGA and CCSSO want to produce documents based on "evidence," shaped by model academic standards and research about important college and workforce skills. The end goal is to create a "structured process," in which views of the standards are informed by research. NGA and CCSSO officials expect that those drafting the standards will receive valuable insight from the feedback groups, state officials, and the public, which the working groups would take seriously.

The students, from the Academy of the Americas, a public school a few miles from downtown, are being asked to do the painstaking work of science, in an unlikely setting. It's part of a curriculum and professional-development program called BioKIDS, which seeks to build students' skill in complex scientific reasoning. The approach goes well beyond fostering students' knowledge of science facts and concepts, to place a heavy emphasis on the more difficult work of having them devise scientific arguments based on evidence. In Detroit, the the investment seems to be paying off. At the 22 city schools taking part in the program, science scores on the Michigan state exam, which have lagged below state averages, have risen. Students also have scored well on separate tests of their science-reasoning ability.

Almost every time the results of an international test of student achievement are released to the world, the reaction among the American public and policymakers is like that of a parent whose child just brought home a disappointing report card. Elected officials and academic experts question where U.S. students fell short: Was it their curriculum, their teaching, or a confluence of out-of-school factors? What did other nations do well? And what changes to American classrooms would help U.S. students make strides on the next round of tests? Despite such reaction, many observers--even those who interpret the test scores very differently--say that American policymakers need to guard against simplistic interpretations of the results of PISA, TIMSS, or PIRLS, the acronyms for three high-profile tests given periodically to samples of students in dozens of countries. Similarly, researchers and test experts urge U.S. officials to be cautious in the lessons they draw from the impressive scores of high-performing Asian and European nations.

This article reports on the findings of a recent study that examines one of the most enduring debates in science instruction--whether "depth" or "breadth" of knowledge is most important. Its authors come down on the side of depth. The study found that high school students who focus more intensely on core topics within their biology, chemistry, and physics classes fared better in beginning college science than those who delved a little bit into a larger list of topics. Observers say those findings could offer direction to developers of science curricula, tests, and textbooks. A central finding is that "breadth-based learning, as commonly applied in high school classrooms, does not appear to offer students any advantage when they enroll in introductory college science courses although it may contribute to scores on standardized tests." Arguments over depth vs. breadth are common across subjects. In science, however, that debate is especially vexing. Numerous scientific organizations and researchers have called for teaching and tests that are more focused on mastery of big topics. In their view, that position is backed up by the opinions of scientific experts and research on cognition and how humans build knowledge. Yet paring down scientific topics, and determining which ones merit the most attention, is not easy. Many textbooks are written to meet the academic standards of multiple states, and as a result, are crammed with information, or "encyclopedic." Teachers also face pressure to prepare students for the questions they will encounter on state-mandated science tests, which are in turn based on the content found in state academic standards.

This article reports that young inventors at a Maryland high school are not only learning scientific principles, but also teamwork and the tenets of patent law. Twice a week, 10 members of the Clarksburg High School's Coyote Inventors Club gather in a second-floor computer lab to peck away at building a deceptively simple device: a cable that lights up on contact, thus making it easier to find amid the tangled rat's nest of wires behind most computers. Their work requires persistence, group cooperation, applied math and science skills--and, when it comes to the precise design of their product, a commitment to keeping some things secret. The students hope to take their invention--dubbed the "Torch Cord"--several steps further. Their goal for their device is to secure a patent, the basic legal document that makes their product their own and forbids others from making, using, or selling it without permission. The Clarksburg group is one of 16 high school teams chosen to participate in a nationwide grant program called "the InvenTeams initiative," which sponsors students' efforts to build scientific and technological devices of their own creation. The goal is to stoke a passion for science among students, and to nourish scientific inventiveness that will lead them to even greater intellectual and entrepreneurial heights as they advance to college and the workforce.

As educators and policymakers search for ways to prepare students for the rigors of algebra, teachers in the Helena, Montana, school system are starting early by attempting to nurture students' algebraic-reasoning ability, as well as their basic number skills, in early elementary school, rather than waiting until middle or early high school. Teachers in the Helena school district began to rethink math instruction, and the connection between basic arithmetic and algebra, four years ago, when they attended an institute offered by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL), a nonprofit research and evaluation organization in Portland, Oregon. Those sessions focused on improving math instruction in the early grades, emphasizing the principles of "cognitively guided instruction," an influential approach to math teaching and professional development first developed in the 1980s by Thomas P. Carpenter and other researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A core idea of cognitively guided instruction is that young children arrive at school with a strong set of intuitive math skills in areas such as understanding numbers and problem-solving. Teachers who understand those skills, and how students' math knowledge develops, can greatly improve their instruction. Rather than emphasizing drill and procedure, cognitively guided instruction encourages teachers to nurture students' broader understanding of the relationships between numbers, patterns, and the fact that symbols can be used to represent numbers--skills essential in algebra.

Thirteen years ago, Minnesota was a state with no academic standards in mathematics and science and what some observers said was a mixed record in grounding students in crucial academic content, such as number skills and algebra. Since then, the state has set clear guidelines for schools in both subjects, and it also appears to have tuned up what gets taught in math classes. To state officials, the benefits are clear. As one of only two U.S. states to participate in a prominent international measurement of academic skill, Minnesota is scoring at or near the level of many of the highest-performing countries on that exam, and its scores in some categories have jumped significantly since it first took part in 1995. The state's participation in the 1995 and 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study has given researchers information to dissect the factors that yielded the state's impressive gains in some areas, particularly early-grades math. State officials credit the establishment and continued refinement of academic standards, as well as their efforts to translate those documents for classroom teachers, as prime factors behind the progress.