What this week's New Yorker story on Steve Barr and Green Dot gets right -- and wrong.

This week's New Yorker profiles education activist Steve Barr (article here), whose upstart nonprofit called Green Dot has created a slew of successful schools in Los Angeles over the past nine years....

When two teachers came up to Kashi Nelson earlier this year and invited her to a meeting, Nelson was not at all enthused.

After all, it was all the extra meetings at the KIPP school in Brooklyn that the veteran educator felt were making the school year so hard.

WINNERS:  Obama campaign staff:  they threaded the needle for 22 months and then (some) got plum DPC jobs. Win! Arne Duncan: from nearly-complete obscurity to the top education job in the country....

It's hard not to think of incoming president George Bush's 2000 pick of Houston superintendent Rod Paige right now. Like Paige, Arne Duncan comes from a big city with a success story that the national press failed to figure out was mostly a mirage. Like Paige, Duncan will soon find...

In a transition that has overall gone relatively smoothly, the still-incomplete process of picking an Education Secretary -- usually considered one of the least important and most easily-filled Cabinet posts -- has turned a prolonged, openly antagonistic debacle.

What's happened? Part of it is circumstantial. Another part is generational. But...

Should Chicago schools superintendent Arne Duncan go to Washington if he's asked to head the U.S. Department of Education, or should he stay in town?

That's the question on many peoples' minds, including Elizabeth Evans from the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, who very much wants him to stay...

The general public may only want to know what kind of puppy the Obama girls are going to get and where they're going to go to school. The big-time pundits may be focused in on the pros and cons of a stimulus package and John Kerry as a candidate for...

What to make of Reverend James Meeks' proposal to start off the fast-approaching school year by sending rough and tumble Chicago public school students to try and register at leafy New Trier High School?

Opinions vary wildly - as do predictions of whether the stunt will take place or make...

Late last week, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain surprised some observers by endorsing an education platform that had been developed by two staunch Democrats -- the Reverend Al Sharpton and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

This is by far McCain's most savvy campaign move of the past...

When this year's John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur "genius" grants were announced last month, the group of 24 included one person focused on improving public education.

At an early age, this woman had created a powerful new way to help urban students and over the past 15 years...

When the prospects for renewal of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) blew up during a marathon congressional hearing last Monday, there was no shortage of ready explanations:

The "staff draft" proposal put out by committee leaders had gone too far (or not far enough)...

It seems strangely frivolous and self-indulgent for Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to appear on The Daily Show tonight, given all the fires she has to put out back home (student lending, Reading First, and reauthorizing that pesky law known as No Child Left Behind).

Still, I've got some questions Stewart...

The only thing saving Education Secretary Margaret Spellings from drifting into Alberto Gonzales territory right now is, well, Alberto Gonzales.

If it weren't for the fact that everyone's attention is focused on him, more folks would notice that Spellings has been up to some very Gonzales-like things over at the...

Can $60 million make a difference?

Last week, the Gates and Broad foundations announced that former Colorado Governor (and LA schools superintendent) Roy Romer would help lead a new $60 million initiative to make education a top issue in the 2008 presidential campaign - one of the biggest...

For a time, Fairfax County, Virginia, educators were thinking about - some would say threatening to - give up $17 million in federal No Child Left Behind funds rather than give a test to ELL (bilingual) kids that they thought was too hard. Well, of course it is. Everyone knows...