How Do U.S. Students’ Problem-Solving Skills Compare to Their Peers in the Highest-Performing Countries?

Released this morning by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), PISA 2012 Results: Creative Problem Solving: Students’ Skills in Tackling Real-Life Problems, is the OECD’s first assessment of problem-solving skills and its first attempt to measure the creative skills that today’s economy demands from its workers. Click on the video to the right to…

Building an Effective School Board

When it comes to the decisions that most directly affect the business of public education and what happens in classrooms, few people are as influential—and often as unacknowledged—as local school board members. Indeed, a new report from the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute suggests the makeup of local school boards can have a measurable effect on student…

U.S. Department of Education issues Civil Rights Data Collection report, first since 2000

The U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has issued its first report in almost 15 years examining civil rights data from public schools nationwide, says The Chronicle.  The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) from the 2011-12 school year compiled data from all 97,000 of the nation’s public schools and its 16,500 school districts…

Report: Arts Education Across the States

Forty-one states now have instructional requirements for arts education at all levels (elementary, middle, and high school), though only 17 states have policies regarding assessment in the subject, according to a new report by the Arts Education Partnership, a part of the Council of Chief State School Officers. The group released an updated version of its annual analysis…