Principals tend to prefer working in schools with higher-achieving students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Principals often use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments. District leadership can also exacerbate principal turnover by implementing policies aimed at improving low-performing schools such as rotating school leaders. Using longitudinal data from one large urban school district we find principal turnover is detrimental to school performance. Frequent turnover results in lower teacher retention and lower student achievement gains, which are particularly detrimental to students in high-poverty and failing school

Why I am Marching in DC with the Save our Schools Movement on July 30

As Nicholas Kristof noted a few months ago in the NY Times, the quality of the teaching profession was long subsidized by discrimination and other barriers preventing talented people from entering other fields

Preview of "School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias" from Rachel Tabachnick on Vimeo. The full length version focuses on the state of Pennsylvania and its Education Improvement Tax Credit program or EITC, the oldest and second largest corporate tax credit program in the country.

The party line for advocates of online learning is that virtual and brick-and-mortar schools should work collaboratively to find the best learning solutions for every student, which may or may not look like a traditional classroom experience. But in many places, the fiscal realities of state policy in a down economy can pit potential collaborators against each other.

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.

Perhaps the greatest current impediment to better schools is our meager understanding of the most high-leverage actions and elements that ensure large, swift improvements to learning. If implemented, they would have an immediate effect on student learning and on college and career preparation.

When people like Diane Ravitch talk about the billionaires taking over education policy, they are sometimes dismissed as being alarmist, or even of promoting conspiracy theories. But a recent video details exactly how this has been happening, in the state of Illinois. The video released last week of Jonah Edelman describing how he and his group, Stand For Children, managed to maneuver education "reform" legislation is still reverberating through the education blog world.

In a July 7 lecture at Fordham, an education expert disputed the notion of "our failing schools" and said the real problem facing American schoolchildren is poverty. "There's nothing wrong, seriously wrong, with our schools. There is no crisis," said Stephen Krashen, Ph.D., professor emeritus of learning and instruction at the University of Southern California. "The crisis is 100 percent manufactured. The whole thing is a hoax."

Colorado school districts have overwhelmed the state Department of Education with their interest in participating in a state pilot program this fall for evaulating new teachers and principals.

The board voted unanimously to change Cincinnati Public Schools into a "district of choice," which will offer a variety of schools and educational options to students in grades K-8.

Sweeney will not allow votes on overhaul of teacher merit pay and voiding seniority.

New York City has plans to close 22 "failing" schools, taking the view that if those schools can't do right by their students, they shouldn't continue to exist. Because students deserve better, and if you don't agree with what Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his assorted education chancellors think is best, then you don't care about kids.

The McCarthy era of the 1950's destroyed the careers of those who had associated in one way or another with Communist party members. I thought of this shameful period when I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about some 1,000 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District who are unable to find positions in the district because they previously taught at low-performing schools that are undergoing restructuring

A Washington state teacher did not violate the due-process rights of a student with developmental disabilities who had sexual encounters in a bathroom with another special education student, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The U.S. Supreme Court's recently concluded term generated significant rulings for the rights of children, school board members, school employees, and litigants seeking to challenge aid to private schools. I have this overview in the July 13 print edition of Education Week. Below are my Top Ten decisions of the Supreme Court term of interest to educators.

After nearly two decades of magic on the tennis court, Andre Agassi is ready to tackle his next big challenge: giving large numbers of underprivileged children a chance to succeed through charter schools.

Calls to reform teacher layoff policies have begun to appear with regularity in newspaper editorials, policy briefs, and statehouses-and for good reason. A growing body of research confirms that teacher quality is the most influential in-school factor driv­ing student achievement. That being the case, teacher dismissal policies and procedures can have profound implications for how much students learn.

How ALEC, the Koch brothers and their corporate allies plan to privatize government.