Calling it a “national education emergency,” Mitt Romney said Wednesday that poor and disabled children should be allowed to escape failing public schools by using federal dollars to pay for private schools, online schools and other alternative settings. Read full article > >

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Mitt Romney promotes school vouchers in attack on Obama’s education policy

In Chicago for a gathering of Nobel Peace Prize winners, Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other historic figures dropped in on more than a dozen public schools throughout the city.

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Gorbachev and Other Nobel Laureates Visit Chicago Schools

Nearly 5,000 children qualified for gifted and talented kindergarten seats in New York City public schools in the fall, 22 percent more than last year and more than double the number four years ago.

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As Ranks of Gifted Soar in N.Y., Fight Brews for Kindergarten Slots

For the past decade, public schools nationwide have aimed for a target fixed in federal law: that 100 percent of students should pass reading and math tests by 2014. Now Virginia wants to lower the goal to 75 percent for reading and 70 percent for math. Read full article > >

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Va., Md. and D.C. seek to opt out of key parts of No Child Left Behind law

Merit pay for teachers, an idea kicked around for decades, is suddenly gaining traction. Fervently promoted by Michelle A. Rhee when she was chancellor of the District’s public schools, the concept is picking up steam from a growing cadre of politicians who think one way to improve the country’s troubled schools is to give fat bonuses to good teachers. Read full article > >

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As teacher merit pay spreads, one noted voice cries, ‘It doesn’t work’

Thousands of elementary students were suspended from public schools last year in Washington and its suburbs, some of them so young that they were learning about out-of-school discipline before they could spell or multiply. Read full article > >

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Suspended from school in early grades

A new study commissioned by D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray recommends that the city turn around or close more than three dozen traditional public schools in its poorest neighborhoods and expand the number of high-performing charter schools. Read full article > >

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Many public schools in D.C.’s poorest area should be transformed or shut, study says; more charters recommended

D.C. public schools have the largest achievement gap between black and white students among the nation’s major urban school systems, a distinction laid bare in a federal study released Wednesday. The District also has the widest achievement gap between white and Hispanic students, the study found, compared with results from other large systems and the national average. Read full article > >

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D.C. schools have largest black-white achievement gap in federal study

Parents across the Washington region will soon have more readily available — and useful— information about how their public schools are doing, the result of new initiatives underway at the local and state level for reporting and displaying education data. The District, Maryland and Virginia are pledging some changes as part of their applications to the Obama administration for exemption from unpopular requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, among them the mandate for 100 percent proficiency by 2014 on standardized reading and math tests. Read full article > >

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New initiatives making schools data readily available

Pressed for dollars, a growing number of public schools are doing what many educators once considered unimaginable: eliminating an entire school day each week. At least 292 school districts nationwide have a four-day week, according to a Washington Post survey, more than double the 120 estimated two years ago. Read full article > >

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In trimming school budgets, more officials turn to a four-day week

City residents remain broadly dissatisfied with the quality of the public schools, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.

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In Poll, New Yorkers Say Schools Aren’t Better Under Bloomberg

District students head back to school today, and at a few D.C. Public Schools, they will walk into brand-new or brilliantly renovated facilities . But at many more schools, students will find smaller but significant upgrades: new salad bars. This year, 27 DCPS schools will feature cafeteria salad bars, about double the number from last year. It’s the latest upgrade to school meals under nutrition chief Jeff Mills , who was hired by ex-chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to overhaul the school system’s dismal food service . Read full article > >

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D.C. Public Schools expand salad bars

[This post has been updated] Outside Marshall Elementary School on Fort Lincoln Drive NE, a cheer goes up as a pair of garden tillers finally kick in after a couple of false starts. Steering one of the tillers is Matt Hendricks , fourth line winger for the Washington Capitals. The team has adopted the school for the year and signed up more than 100 people to paint murals, plant a garden and build a robotics table as part of the D.C. Public Schools annual Beautification Day. Read full article > >

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Volunteers spruce up D.C. schools

If we needed more proof — and we really didn’t — that Congress abrogated its responsibility by allowing No Child Left Behind to continue as the law of the land, we only have to look at Virginia. Virginia is the latest state to experience the huge gap between what test scores actually say and what the law says they say. In newly released scores of the 2011 state Standards of Learning exam, 62 percent of of its public schools failed to meet benchmarks in math and reading, compared to 39 percent the year before. Read full article > >

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Virginia and the NCLB mess Congress left behind

Half a century after many Virginia public schools shut their doors rather than accept black students, the state is offering college scholarships to compensate those whose education suffered in the era of “massive resistance” to desegregation. Among the recipients: white students. Since 2004, about 70 people have won the scholarships, including a handful of white Virginians whose schooling was disrupted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A precise count of white scholarship recipients was unavailable, but the total is believed to be fewer than 10. Officials who oversee the state program say they want to spread the word to more white students who might be eligible. Read full article > >

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Some of Va.’s ‘Brown v. Board’ college grants go to whites