Can a teachers' union successfully be both a hardball-playing defender of its rights and a collaborative force for the common good? It is both a question of philosophy and, increasingly, one of policy direction for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), whose biennial convention in Detroit showed delegates grappling with the tension between…

The world of virtual schooling is experiencing a host of major policy shifts that are opening doors for its expansion, but at the same time holding it up to greater scrutiny. This special report, the first in a three-part 2012-2013 series on virtual education, examines how state policymakers, educators, and schools are rethinking and changing the…

Amid a struggling economy, a raft of foreign-policy headaches, and the tail end of a heated campaign season, President Barack Obama carved out time in his schedule last month to watch students in the State Dining Room demonstrate a solar-powered model car, a water-purification system, and a soccer-playing robot. The science fair was the fifth…

School districts and educators chafing under the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act are hoping to prod the U.S. Department of Education into giving them a reprieve from the provisions they see as most onerous, as the prospects for an overhaul of the law by Congress anytime soon remain cloudy. The Obama administration and congressional…

In this article, the author reports some 3,800 near-simultaneous "house parties" organized throughout Pennsylvania to call on their federal lawmakers to put more money into education. The parties, in which three-quarters of them were organized by teachers such as Jane Dugdale, are the main election-season event of a new coalition of…

In Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Oakland, California and Philadelphia, to name a few cities where it has been active, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has emerged as a major player in K-12 in education issues. Its army of organizers has tackled everything from a lack of stop signs to such vexing issues as teacher…