Education Policy & School Reform News

After a two-week standoff, Seattle Public Schools and the teachers union reached an agreement on a contract, putting an end to a strike that left 53,000 students out of class for six days. “This agreement signals a new era in bargaining in public education,” Jonathan Knapp, president of the Seattle Education Association, said in a…

An after-school chess program for 20 elementary and middle schools in the Ferguson-Florissant school district started with a simple conversation between a father and his 10-year-old son. Nick Ragone, senior vice president and chief communications and marketing officer at Ascension, the nation’s largest Catholic nonprofit health system, says the idea came to him eight weeks…

As Labor Day abruptly marked the end of summer, arguments for a four-day workweek roiled across the Internet as a conduit to improved health and a greater quality of life. But the question of students enjoying a shorter school week has remained largely off the table because of concerns that an extended weekend would hurt…

A ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court overturning a 2012 voter-approved charter school law could leave about 1,300 students without a school next year. The ruling came Friday, just before Labor Day weekend. For now, the students are attending classes, but the fate of the schools is unclear. The Washington State Charter School Association has said it will find a…

A San Francisco elementary school has created gender-neutral bathrooms for its students in kindergarten and first grade, the “Today” show reported Friday. Miraloma Elementary School decided to transform two single-stall facilities that had been divided by gender in the classroom into two gender-neutral facilities. Now, any student can use either bathroom.   School officials defended the…

A Missouri school district is under fire for allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex. Alliance Defending Freedom has sent a letter to the Hillsboro R-3 School District asking the board of education to change its recent decision.  “Protecting students from inappropriate exposure to the opposite sex is not only perfectly legal, it’s a school…

NEW ORLEANS—For all its devastation, Hurricane Katrina swept into this city an opportunity to embark on one of the greatest education experiments in America. In the aftermath of the 2005 storm, instead of rebuilding a public school system where roughly two in every three schools were deemed “failing,” the city transformed almost all of its…

For years, Kirk and Tanya White thought New Orleans public schools didn't work for their two sons. They got their eldest son, Geno, into a private school under a city education initiative, but his father says it turned out the new school also was failing by Louisiana's own standards. Then Geno hit a low point when he was…

Eight years after the program technically expired, Congress is finally debating an update of the contentious No Child Left Behind Act, which poured an avalanche of federal programs and testing standards on public schools across the U.S. The House’s update of No Child Left Behind, called the Student Success Act, will be the topic of…

Liz Robbins was caught off-guard when a Washington, D.C., area code appeared on her phone. “I apologize,” she said. “With the surgery … I had been emotional right before you called.” Robbins was answering the phone from Henderson, Nev., a short drive from Las Vegas. When the 202 area showed up, she thought it was…