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Video tutorial on how the stimulus spending works, particularly in regard to special education.

"Follow the money" can be good advice. Knowing who is footing the bill--for a political campaign, policy notion, or advocacy group--doesn't tell you all you need to know; candidates, policies, and organizational platforms need to be judged ultimately on their own merits. But you're right to put on your skeptic's glasses if Walton Family Foundation is sponsoring a conference on elected school boards; if the American Federation of Teachers is funding a study of charter schools; or if Eli Broad is supporting a grassroots group advocating for mayoral control.

The city's plan for more than $255 million in federal Race to the Top funds has something for everyone -- especially educrats, data analysts and consultants, a Post review has found.

As a School Board member, I have to ask: Where's the accountability for the politicians in our statehouse? Why do we tolerate budget shortfalls and heavy-handed, unfunded reform measures that impede our progress as a district?

Governor Christie removed full funding of the state aide formula for the 2011-2012 school year.  A report released yesterday by the Education Law Center states that Egg Harbor Township schools are now underfunded by over $17,000,000 as a result of Christie's budget vetoes.

This CEP report provides updated information for policymakers and others about the status of publicly funded voucher programs and the findings of major voucher studies published since 2000. Other types of programs also subsidize private school tuition- including tuition tax credits, specialized vouchers for students with disabilities, "town tuition" programs for remote rural students, and privately funded vouchers-but in order to produce a succinct report focusing on the most controversial form of subsidy, we limited our review to publicly funded voucher programs for general education students.

Gonzalez has touted initiatives to increase literacy and parental involvement to school community members throughout District 7, which is largely poor and low-performing. Now he is trying to turn District 7's attention toward arts education, at a time when many schools are facing cuts to their art and music teaching positions. He is asking a handful of local principals to help him write a large grant to fund after school and summer school arts education at multiple schools in future years.

As public school students and educators throughout Florida prepared to return to schools that have fewer teachers, larger classes and smaller budgets, a for-profit charter school company, Charter Schools USA, paid for 2,000 employees to attend a pep rally. The rally included controversial charter schools proponent Michelle Rhee and Gov. Rick Scott - the man who pushed for $1.35 billion in cuts for public schools and increased funding for charter and virtual schools.

In his new book, Class Warfare, Steven Brill confirms that Michelle Rhee is being funded by Rupert Murdoch.  Murdoch,  CEO of News Corp., is currently embroiled in a growing cell phone hacking scandal. Rhee's mentor, Joel Klein, serves as Murdoch's chief legal counsel.   News Corp is the  parent company of far-right FoxNews.

Panelists talked about early childhood education programs. Among the topics they addressed were improving Head Start programs, school accountability, education funding, and monitoring the effectiveness of various programs. They also responded to questions from the audience.

Boston, Central Falls, R.I., and Sacramento, Calif. will join a handful of other of other school systems to receive funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to set up collaborative relationships with charter schools within their borders, the Seattle-based philanthropy announced today.

A map of the funders of the charter school movement looks much like a map of the funders of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

Tired of waiting for Congress to fix No Child Left Behind, Oregon passed its own package of laws similar to NCLB last month that include their own, customized approaches to accountability systems. Why? According to current NCLB measurements, four out of five schools nationwide could be labeled as failures, and could possibly lose all federal funding.

THE SCHOOL privatization movement took an ominous new step in June with the creation of the first for-profit real estate investment fund aimed at the construction of charter schools.

A low-performing Manhattan high school that was granted up to $6 million in extra funds to undergo a "transformation" has found the secret formula for success: Dumb down the requirements for students to pass.

President Obama's decision to separate his jobs bill into individual pieces and push for funds to hire teachers and first responders first has so far failed to convince any Republicans lawmakers of its efficacy. And in large part, the pushback from the GOP has been fairly straightforward. As House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office argued in an email on Monday, the administration has already asked for and received billions of dollars in direct aid to states for the purposes of retaining teachers and putting firefighters and cops back to work -- and it hasn't made a lick of difference.

Imagine you are David Tepper, a 54-year-old guy with $5 billion in the bank. You've played the Wall Street game all your adult life, and you've scored huge wins, over and over. Now what? Tepper, a hedge fund manager who lives in Livingston, has found his answer: He is jumping into the political game in New Jersey, promising to spend huge bucks over the long term to change the state of play on school reform, starting with tenure.

Following is another in my school finance geeky series of straight-up analyses of state school finance formulas. I wrote about New Jersey's funding formula few days ago. This analysis focuses specifically on the cuts levied across NY school districts for 2011-12 and the underfunding of the foundation formula for select districts.

The push for school choice cleared its first major legislative hurdle - but not its last - when the state Senate voted Wednesday to provide taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers for impoverished students in failing public schools.