For years, the St. Louis school district has experienced the convergence of two trend lines school superintendents hope never to see: rising employee-pension costs and falling student enrollment. Despite years of fully funding its share of the teacher-pension plan, the proportion of the St. Louis district's budget tied up in paying benefits for…

President Barack Obama's announcement last week of a wide-ranging anti-violence plan in response to the Newtown, Connecticut, school shootings comes as many districts are adopting new and sometimes dramatic measures--including arming teachers and volunteers--intended to prevent similar tragedies in their own schools. School safety experts warn…

Creating private school vouchers for special education students--programs that are largely unchallenged in court, unlike other publicly financed tuition vouchers--can be the perfect way to clear a path for other students to get school options, according to school choice proponents. At least seven states--Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio,…

Even as they struggle to climb out of deep financial holes, states are facing lawsuits that contend they do not meet their constitutions' requirements to provide sufficient funding to districts and fail to provide resources for disadvantaged schools and student populations. This article reports on legal battles in Texas, Colorado, and elsewhere…

A handful of recession-ravaged states have kicked off a new fiscal year without balanced budgets, leaving public school educators in limbo as they struggled to manage spending amid dwindling resources and political bickering over unprecedented budget gaps. The crisis remains most severe in California, which, as of last week, faced a $26.3 billion…

In its fiscal 2011 budget request, the Obama administration has laid out its intention of carrying forward key teacher-effectiveness policies within the economic-stimulus law into the next edition of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In doing so, the budget proposal would invest heavily in competitive grants for new ways of recruiting,…

As the U.S. Department of Education prepares to throw $3 billion in one-time money on the table to improve perennially foundering schools, a gulf is emerging between what federal officials would like to see done with the funds and what many districts say is their capacity--and inclination--to deliver. While some districts say the federal largess…

Two years ago, only 150 students attended Holabird Elementary, then a K-5 school in the southeastern corner of this city. Competition from charters and from regular public schools in nearby Baltimore County had drained families from Holabird, a chronic underperformer. So when Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive officer of the Baltimore city…

As states look for ways to hold school districts accountable for how they use big increases in K-12 funding, New York's experience may offer a test case in directing the flow of that new money. Under the state's ambitious "Contracts for Excellence" program, 55 of New York's 705 districts will share $430 million in extra aid this school…

When Jerry D. Weast became the superintendent of the Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools in 1999, he spent the summer poring over student-achievement results and demographic trends. Then he created a map to illustrate what he'd found. The map divided the suburban district, just outside the nation's capital, into two distinct areas, which…

This article reports that President Bush's fiscal 2008 budget request for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act is being criticized by two key congressional Democrats as they believe that the plan falls short of what schools need to get on track to meet the measure's ambitious achievement goals. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Sen. Edward…

The U.S. Department of Education will see its smallest budget increase in nearly a decade under the catchall spending plan approved by the Republican-controlled Congress in a lame-duck session. For the first time since President Bush entered office, the budget will fall short of his overall request for education funding. The final fiscal 2005…

A year and a half ago, President Bush proposed creating a new federal mathematics effort that would offer millions of dollars in grants to school districts to adopt proven strategies for improving classroom instruction in that subject. Administration officials had pictured the new program, called Math Now, as being modeled on Reading First, the $1…

Under President Bush's proposed fiscal 2006 budget, the federal Head Start program would get a $45 million increase in funding. That money, however, would go for a project involving only a handful of states, not to increase the main program educating preschoolers. The proposed increase to Head Start's fiscal 2005 budget of $6.84 billion would go…

The University of Chicago holds the charter for and runs four independent public schools. As a charter school operator, the University of Chicago is investing considerable resources in the venture, in faculty time and expertise, back-office support, and fundraising. It's also putting the highly selective university's good name on the line. The…