Yesterday, Gov. Nathan Deal (R-GA) released a comprehensive report on a massive cheating scandal that took place in Atlanta's Public Schools system (APS). The report uncovered the participation of nearly 180 APS employees in altering test scores and facilitating cheating.

The Republican-led Michigan Legislature on Thursday approved changes to the state's teacher tenure system that supporters say would make it easier to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom.

Mike Feinberg is co-founder of the KIPP Academies and superintendent of KIPP Houston, which serves more than 6,000 students in 18 schools. In 2007, KIPP Houston announced its "KIPP Turbo" plan, under which it aims to grow into a Pre-K to 12 network of 42 schools. The goal is to enroll 10 percent of the students in Houston, making KIPP Houston by far the largest network of charter schools in one city. As part of this effort, Mike recently announced that he'd be shifting roles to focus on fundraising, advocacy, and external relations, while handing the superintendency of KIPP Houston off to a successor. If you're not familiar with Mike's story, you can check out Jay Mathews' KIPP book, Work Hard, Be Nice for an immensely readable, if pretty syrupy, account. Anyway, with Mike changing roles and with KIPP Houston well into its ambitious growth plan, I thought it'd be interesting to chat with Mike about looming challenges and lessons learned.

The school privatization wars have slogged into a summer stalemate, stuck in a sort of trench warfare that, for the moment at least, rendered the big guns of the most powerful political figures in the state useless against a grassroots campaign that appears to have won the hearts and minds of New Jersey residents.

Law officers and lawmakers in some states want schools to help spot illegal immigrants. Federal authorities remind school officials that every child is entitled to an education. National education groups echo that but recommend that schools avoid getting involved when it comes to students' citizenship issues.

A student-achievement test under consideration by nearly half the states has been redesigned to ease their concerns that it would cost too much, shape curriculum, and eat up too much instructional time.

School Reform is the American Elite's preferred response to poverty and inequality, a strategy that requires no sacrifice, no redistribution nor any self-organization by America's disfranchised groups. Every day, it is proving itself a dismal failure.

There's no mystery or proprietary secret among academics or statisticians and data geeks as to how to construct simple comparisons of school demographics using available data.  It's really not that hard. It doesn't require bold assumptions, nor does it require complex statistical models. Sometimes, all that's needed to shed light on a situation is a simple descriptive summary of the relevant data.  Below is a "how to" (albeit sketchy) with links to data for doing your own exploring of charter and traditional public school demographics, by grade level and location.

If you are a public school parent and you're worried about the way standardized testing increasingly dominates our children's education, brace yourself. Things are about to get a lot worse.

Once upon a time, the education "war of ideas" was fought on the battleground of the nation's op-ed pages. Then came blogs. But that was so two years ago (see "Linky Love, Snark Attacks, and Fierce Debates about Teacher Quality?" what next, Winter 2009.) Who has time for 400-word missives anymore? If you've got a point to make, tweet it!

The popular education blog Eduwonk included a post today stating school reformers like former NYC superintendent of schools Joel Klein, current superintendent of Louisiana's (mostly New Orleans) Recovery School District John White and J.C. Brizard in Chicago are behind a movement that is improving urban schools. The blog entry pointed to New Orleans and New York as some of the movement's success stories.

Last week in this space, I speculated about the most influential educator in America. Although I put forth more than a half dozen names, most respondents 'voted' for Diane Ravitch, the historian/policymaker/apostate whose book, The Death and Life of the Great American Public School, is a best seller.

Summer vacation has a way of making the fall opening of schools seem years away. Yet for parents who are disaffected for one reason or another with the education their children are receiving from neighborhood schools, it's a time to make some hard decisions. Should they keep their children where they are or should they seek alternatives?

In the new state regulations for evaluation of educators, approved on June 28, one of the three measures that will be used to evaluate teachers includes "state-wide growth measure(s) where applicable, including MCAS Student Growth Percentile and Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment (MEPA)."

Almost two years ago, a report on New York City charter schools rocked the education policy world. It was written by Hoover Institution scholar Caroline Hoxby with co-authors Sonali Murarka and Jenny Kang.

"School may be out for the summer, but school choice is in, as states across the nation have moved to expand education opportunities for disadvantaged kids. This year is shaping up as the best for reformers in a very long time."

Succeeding against all odds certainly describes Ana Ponce, chief executive officer of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, which runs five charter schools, the majority in the most crowded, impoverished and gang-ridden section of Los Angeles.

Diane Ravitch responds to David Brooks' column.

After several years of state and local budget cuts, thousands of school districts across the nation are gutting summer-school programs, cramming classes into four-day weeks or lopping days off the school year, even though virtually everyone involved in education agrees that American students need more instruction time.