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Mercer County educational leaders say they disagree with a new Christie administration effort to allow superintendents with non-educational backgrounds to head struggling school districts.

During a hearing in June, as the city's Panel for Educational Policy prepared to move on a plan to "co-locate" 22 charter schools in public-school buildings, most of the audience knew what would happen: Parents would yell, teachers would plead and union members would attack the Bloomberg administration. And then, after hours of testimony in the tightly packed auditorium of a Prospect Heights high school, the plan would pass as expected.

State Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. announced Monday that he has created a high-level board to crack down on cheating by teachers, administrators and students in standardized tests.

The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a blunt acknowledgment that thousands of young black and Latino men are cut off from New York's civic, educational and economic life, plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to improve their circumstances.

While school administrators praise a new law that extends the number of years a teacher must work to earn tenure, teachers unions oppose the measure.

In 2010, California enacted education legislation known as the "parent trigger." The legislation empowers parents of children at schools that have failed to meet annual yearly progress for at least four years to change the administration, convert the school to a charter, or shut it down completely if they gather signatures from at least 51% of parents at the school. Similar legislation exists in Mississippi and Connecticut, but has failed to become law in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, and Maryland. Parents at McKinley Elementary in Compton Unified - a school that only met yearly progress once in the last eight years -were the first in the nation to "pull the trigger" and remain the sole group to do so to date. As a result of their action, the State of California required the district to hire a "direct assistance intervention team," and later, an attempt by parents to convert the school to a charter was rebuffed by the school district on technical grounds. A case is currently pending in Los Angeles Superior Court. Many school reformers believe that this law puts the interests of children ahead of teachers and helps to save children in failing schools before the clock runs out. Many education professionals, among them the president of the California Federation of Teachers, view the law as a "lynch mob provision," intended to dismantle the public school system. The politics of the "parent trigger" are confusing, with the lines between conservatives and liberals often blurred. This debate will examine the arguments in favor and in opposition to this reform, focusing on the experience to date in California and developments in other parts of the country where similar legislation is being considered.

At first glance, the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers and the Wake County, North Carolina, school board couldn't be more disparate. Charles and David Koch, the brains behind the massive Koch Industries conglomerate and the funders of so many right-wing political causes, are national figures, credited with (or accused of, depending on your political persuasion) launching the tea party movement and waging war on the Obama administration and its agenda. The Wake County public school board is, well, just that.

A few weeks after I criticized EdisonLearning's invitation to Indiana, Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and Mitch Daniels have welcomed yet another Jeb Bush crony, Jonathan Hage, CEO of Florida-based for-profit education management company Charter Schools USA (CS USA), to possibly administrate our so-called "failing schools." Although IDOE's Dale Chu testifies that plenty of "drilling" took place in selecting the turnaround companies which have landed on the final list, Jeb Bush's DNA is embedded in the deals.

Last February, two very different narratives played out in Denver and Madison. In Madison, political vandals tried to take out one of the state's great civic institutions: public sector unions. Unions were radically reduced in their capacity to bring the wisdom of the practitioner voice to policy. They were loaded down with legal requirements designed to hobble them with an obsession with mere survival. They lost legal rights to speak for workers in any meaningful way. We know the story: it was big news. In Denver, overshadowed by events in Madison, the US Department of Education convened a Labor-Management Collaboration Conference. Here, a very different narrative played out. Unions were treated not as enemies to be destroyed, but as valued partners in the policy process. Twelve districts that had collaboratively integrated their union voice, and twelve locals who had responded with care and creativity were highlighted as models. Over 150 districts sent teams of administrators, political leaders, and union leaders to learn from these twelve districts.

Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors, a new book about a Los Angeles school turnaround by education journalist Alexander Russo, is refreshingly void of any mythical figures. The book tracks the events leading up to, and a couple of years following, the takeover of troubled Locke High School by start-up charter management organization Green Dot Schools. Because of the history of violence and failure in and around Locke (located in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles), a majority of Locke teachers and administrators petitioned in 2007 to be released from the Los Angeles Unified School District and placed under Green Dot's management.

When a large number of public school teachers and administrators in Atlanta were recently exposed for changing students' answers on standardized tests, some opponents of student testing used it as an opportunity to question achievement results here in New York City and the education reform community's push for strong accountability systems.

In April 2011, Spectrum K12 School Solutions and leading education organizations including AASA, CASE, NASDSE and the RTI Action Network/NCLD conducted a web-based survey of K-12 district administrators to gauge the extent to which Response to Intervention (RTI) has been adopted.

PERHAPS THE VERY best thing about Steven Brill's new book is its title. The phrase "class warfare" has a double meaning, of course, and the book paints very clearly the deep economic cleavages that underlie the fierce education debates within the Democratic Party over such policy issues as charter schools, merit pay for teachers, and the role of poverty in achievement outcomes. In Brill's telling, the education class war pits a heroic group of entrepreneurial philanthropists, highly successful hedge fund billionaires, and idealistic Ivy Leaguers who join Teach for America against somewhat grubby and grasping rank-and-file public school teachers and their union leaders, who often put their own selfish interests above those of the children. In looking out for what is best for low-income and minority students, Brill contends, Wall Street hedge fund managers are a much more reliable ally than the middle-class teachers who educate schoolchildren every day. Brill's worldview is important to understand because it is typical of the outlook of the education "reform" community, including leaders of the Obama administration, and the president himself.

A bombshell report by the Nutter administration on the backroom political dealings of State Rep. Dwight Evans and former School Reform Commission Chairman Robert L. Archie Jr. over a school contract fell flat Friday with City Council members, who called the men's behavior the stuff of everyday politics in Philadelphia.

Soon after he gained control of the city's public schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushed to shut down enormous high schools and replace them with smaller schools. Now, his administration is pledging to do the same with middle schools, aiming to open at least 50 more in the next two years.

With ever-declining budgets, education administrators across the nation have been struggling for years with an increasing teacher turnover rate. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that race may play a role in teacher turnover. Lael Keiser, an associate professor at the Truman School of Public Affairs and an associate professor in the department of political science in the College of Arts and Science, and Jason Grissom, who is now an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, found that turnover rates are lower among teachers who are of the same race as their school principals.

A controversial Bedford-Stuyvesant charter school that parents charge is shortchanging students on supplies and services is being audited by the state controller's office. Parents at the Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School on Quincy St. said school administrators aren't doling out the cash to pay for textbooks or extra help after school.

We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) on postsecondary attainment. We match CMS administrative records to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nationwide database of college enrollment. Among applicants with low-quality neighborhood schools, lottery winners are more likely than lottery losers to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor's degree. They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university. The results suggest that school choice can improve students' longer-term life chances when they gain access to schools that are better on observed dimensions of quality.

One recent Monday morning, I boarded the C train at 168th Street in Upper Manhattan, on my way to jury duty. While I waited on the platform, I noticed a young black man, high-school student age, professionally dressed in a blue shirt and tie and dark blue slacks. The young man's face was hardened, possibly to ward off any conversation from strangers. We both boarded the train and took seats which called for direct eye contact if either of us faced forward. The young man happened to be sitting under a poster that read "Welcome Back to School." The posters are sponsored by the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the principal's union, and the one above his head had a picture of me on it.

Warwick Valley School District leaders are suggesting sending students home an hour early once a month so teachers and principals can implement a new state law requiring staff evaluations. Administrators say they need the extra time to train and certify evaluators, develop a new data analysis process and conduct evaluations under the new state Annual Professional Performance Review regulations.