EducationNews.org

By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
The Harlem Education Fair drew some 5,000 people, organizers said, reflecting just how significantly the area’s educational landscape has changed over the past decade.

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman hopes to close failing schools and reopen them under private management or as charters.

From reshaping the high school experience to rewarding top teachers with tuition reimbursement and loan forgiveness, dramatic change could come to the Philadelphia School District.

A cyber charter school founded by Dorothy June Brown is part of the widening federal criminal probe of area charter schools, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation.

Jay Mathews
Jaime Escalante, the man who taught me the power of great teaching, had a Spanish word he used often in his East Los Angeles math classes: ganas. It meant the will to succeed, the urge to make an extra effort.

by Kalman R. Hettleman
To borrow from the old quip on giving up smoking: Fixing public schools is easy -- we've done it hundreds of times. Even with the billions of dollars in economic stimulus aid, public schools stand no chance of getting better until we dispel some empty theories about how to help them.

Diane Ravitch
Education was not a big issue in the campaign, but it is a big issue for our society. Our future depends on having a strong and effective public education system, as well as excellent institutions of higher education and a variety of successful private institutions of education.

Organizer of proposed Gloucester charter school works for state
When he threw his support behind a charter school proposal in Gloucester last week, the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education gave kudos to the school's organizers, calling them "a group of very capable people."

The university uses random checks to make sure that grades, honors and extracurricular activities are properly reported. The gray-and-green warehouse in suburban Concord seems an unlikely headquarters for a statewide detective operation, and the fact checkers at work there insist they are not mercil

Dozens of parents picked up literature and interviewed staff from the 17 alternative public schools in the city, searching for the best matches for their children for the 2009-10 school year.

by Joe Nathan
An opportunity like this may not come again in our lifetimes. I know that’s an extreme statement. But the federal stimulus package adopted last week may give Minnesota communities remarkable opportunities to improve school buildings.

By JENNIFER MEDINA
A move to create a union at one of the city’s leading charter schools may turn into a protracted battle, as the deadline passed on Thursday for the school, KIPP AMP in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to voluntarily recognize the union.

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

The field trip was becoming a washout. The fifth-graders from Houston had prepared for months, but the tour guides in Washington, D.C., rushed them through the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court. Standing on the courthouse steps, they were reduced to hearing their teachers quiz them on Doric and Corinthian columns.

For months, parents from the Agora Cyber Charter School in Devon were e-mailing about their difficulties obtaining information on the financial arrangement between the school's founder and her management company.

Students in the city's public schools that are managed by for-profit companies perform better in math than those attending schools run by the Philadelphia School District, according to a study released yesterday by two Harvard University researchers.