Twenty years ago, a report by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) changed the national discussion about what must be done to improve America's schools so that all students experience success. The Commission drew attention to the overlooked fact that the most important school variable affecting student achievement is…

This article challenges the view that citywide referenda alone are an effective means of ensuring accountability for mayoral control. Through new empirical analysis of the referenda results in Boston and Cleveland, the article shows that rather than establish genuine democratic legitimacy, the referenda in fact mask strong class-based, and in…

This report offers recommendations for building community support for federal school turnaround approaches, particularly in communities that oppose these approaches. Parents, the report concludes, want improvement but cherish their local schools and distrust the turnaround options mandated from above by higher levels of government. Thus,…

It's been a decade since former President Bush proposed and Congress passed the No Child Left Behind law. The goal of this law was to raise student achievement and reduce the gap between different groups of students, especially white and minority students. The law's passage reflected a broad consensus among elected officials, business leaders and…

For many years, policymakers and the public have been holding students and schools accountable for improvement, but there was no way to determine whether the public and its elected officials and community organizations were doing their part to strengthen public schools. To address this shortcoming, Public Education network (PEN), with funding from…

The federal Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP, project strives to equalize low-income students' access to higher education by increasing their participation in rigorous coursework, providing expanded opportunities for low-income students and parents to learn about postsecondary educational opportunities…