Following his proposal Friday to limit charter schools, Sen. Bernie Sanders over the weekend released perhaps the most substantive K-12 platform of any of the major presidential candidates. It touches nearly every area of K-12 policy, from protections for LGBT students to teacher pay to special education, but perhaps what sticks out most of all...

American middle schoolers are performing better on a national assessment of technology and engineering, an improvement driven largely by girls. Overall, students’ average score on the National Assessment of Education Progress in Technology and Engineering Literacy increased two points from 2014, the first time the test was given. Several subgroups showed statistically significant improvements, including...

Rodney Robinson, a history teacher at a Virginia juvenile justice center, plans to use his new platform as 2019 National Teacher of the Year to highlight the school-to-prison pipeline and the need for juvenile justice reform. Much like last year’s selection of Mandy Manning, a teacher of refugee and new immigrant students, Robinson’s win, announced Wednesday,...

Discussion of K-12 education was next to nonexistent in the State of the Union address Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s second. The president mentioned the issue just once, when he said, without elaboration, “To help support working parents, the time has come to pass school choice for America’s children.” The words echoed Trump’s 2017 address to...

Education reform, at least its most contentious elements, didn’t have a great night Tuesday. In Arizona, nearly two-thirds of voters rejected a bid by lawmakers to provide education savings accounts to all students. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker, a villain of teachers unions, lost his bid for a third term to state Superintendent Tony Evers, who wants...

The February school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and subsequent student activism around school safety and gun control are fueling young people’s political engagement ahead of next week’s midterm elections. “We can argue all we want, but the only way we win the argument [for more gun control] is when we go and we vote on...

The Senate voted narrowly Tuesday to confirm Jim Blew, a longtime education reform advocate, to be an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education, rounding out the department’s K-12 team. Senators voted 50-49 along party lines to confirm Blew as assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development some 10 months after he was...

After much waiting and Twitter speculation, President Trump announced on live television Monday night that he is nominating conservative D.C. Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. With only one school district under the D.C. Circuit’s jurisdiction, District of Columbia Public Schools, Kavanaugh’s record on school-related...

The Supreme Court in a sweeping decision Wednesday upended the way public-sector unions do business, ruling that dissenting employees cannot be compelled to pay any dues, and that union members must affirmatively opt in to membership — rather than requiring dissenters to opt out. Forcing dissenting employees to pay dues violates First Amendment protections against compelling...

The Supreme Court’s pending decision in the Janus case has the potential to decimate the clout and size of public-sector unions by allowing members who disagree with the union’s activity to opt out of membership. But another path to maintaining membership in local unions may be emerging: a split from the more divisive and politically charged state...