Scores released last week from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) held bad news for American schools, with trends that are essentially flat in mathematics and down in reading. Most states saw little or no improvement in either subject, with their lowest-performing students showing the most significant declines in scores. Whether the cause lies...

What happens to traditional school districts when charter schools come to town? Do they offer families new, high-quality educational options and help spread better teaching techniques? Or do they represent unwanted competition, swiping students and funding from districts until academic performance begins to suffer? It’s a debate that divides much of the education community and...

Applying to one of Chicago’s 11 selective enrollment high schools is a little like banking on the Bears to triumph at the Super Bowl: probably futile and, at times, downright depressing. The elite public schools, which admit students on the basis of high grades and exam scores, attract thousands of high-achieving applicants each year. In...

So are the Democrats going to bus kids across town to integrate schools, or what? That’s the question that has captivated the political media the last two weeks. While the Trump administration has careened from one news cycle to the next, absorbing damaging headlines on everything from its treatment of detained migrants to the president’s...

California legislators are considering a change to education law that would address a peculiar and controversial feature of the state’s charter school sector. The proposed fix is dredging up long-standing issues around how the state permits and oversees schools of choice. At present, California school districts have the option to authorize charter schools that don’t...

Updated California’s years-long debate over school choice has taken a decisive turn over the first few months of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s tenure — and the shift has come at the expense of charter schools. In February, Newsom convened a panel of experts to investigate whether charters siphon funding from school districts. The next month, he...

This article is from The 74’s ongoing ‘Big Picture’ series, bringing American education into sharper focus through new research and data. Go Deeper: See the full series. Over the past few years, education researchers have coalesced around a striking, if somewhat unpalatable, observation: Kids learn more from teachers of their own race. A decade of studies from...

Brown v. Board of Education has been called the Supreme Court’s finest hour, and it is perhaps the most critical single event in the history of American education. In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court swept aside more than a half-century of legal segregation, paved the way for the groundbreaking civil rights legislation of the 1960s...

In a report released today, the KIPP Foundation called on Congress to make college more affordable and help students begin a path to finding good careers. By using federal money to pay for more high school guidance counselors and expand already-successful college completion programs, the organization said, lawmakers could open the door to millions more...

Education can look static when viewed from 30,000 feet. Every year, tens of millions of kids enroll in public schools, most moving on to the next level in June. Change comes slowly, if at all. And certain verities — whether held by lawmakers, parents, or teachers — have always held true. But every year, a...