A primer on the damaging movement to privatize public schools

Marion Brady is a veteran educator who has long argued that public education needs a paradigm shift. Brady says schools need a complete transformation in what and how students learn — not the Common Core State Standards, standardized tests and other elements of corporate-influenced school reform. Here’s his latest piece, on efforts by some reformers…

Can Schools Be Fixed?

Experts on K-12 education offer their reasons for optimism and pessimism going forward. It’s been a tumultuous year for America’s schools—one marked by an expanding minority-student population, an increasingly discontent teaching force, a backlash against standardized testing, and shifting understanding of education reform. It’s seen greater attention on areas traditionally dismissed as nonessential: things like…

President Signs ESEA Rewrite, Giving States, Districts Bigger Say on Policy

For the past quarter century, federal education policy has been moving in one direction: toward standards-based education redesign, a greater reliance on standardized tests, and bigger role for Washington when it comes to holding schools accountable for student results. President Barack Obama reversed course with the stroke of a pen Thursday, putting states and districts…

The end of No Child Left Behind

The deeply divided U.S. Congress is poised to get one big thing accomplished before the end of the year. The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on an overhaul of the widely disliked federal education law known as No Child Left Behind, which officially expired in 2007. Its replacement, the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed…