After the educators at Plaza Towers Elementary School learned that a raging tornado was headed their way Monday, they had few options. The decades-old building -- one of five schools hit in the area -- didn't have a "safe room," or a shelter deemed safe for...

The two elementary schools leveled by the deadly tornado that swept through the Oklahoma City area Monday lacked designated safe rooms designed to protect children and teachers, despite state warnings that the absence of such facilities imperils lives.

At least two other schools in Moore -- the epicenter...

A group of Swarthmore College students wants action.

They're willing to interrupt meetings. They're willing to piss off their peers. And, in some cases, they're willing to go to jail.

That was the guiding thought behind a protest earlier this month, in which students commandeered a Group of...

It's official.

For the 400 or so students in Buena Vista, Mich., school is over, even though the academic year isn't supposed to end until the middle of June.

Instead, they will likely attend "skills camp." If the school board approves the advancement of students -- despite...

As some federal workers face furloughs because of sequestration budget cuts, the U.S. Education Department's approximately 4,700 employees can breathe easy, according to an internal memo sent Friday.

"ED will not need to furlough any employees this fiscal year," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote to his staff....

Since Michelle Rhee's first days as Washington, D.C., schools chancellor, she has evoked intense reactions. Both presidential candidates in 2008 gave her glowing praise in a debate. In the last few months, her loudest critics have called her everything from an "Asian b**ch" to a "dickhead."

Which...

When high school seniors worry about whether they can graduate, it's usually because they're failing a class or two.

Not in Buena Vista.

The tiny Michigan township's school district of about 400 mostly black, mostly poor students is broke. Schools are shuttered indefinitely. Seniors don't know if there will be...

The deathwatch over a tiny school district in Michigan continues as its schools remain closed.

Despite teachers' offers to work for free for at least a week, schools in the Buena Vista School District will remain closed for the third consecutive day Thursday because the district...

The teachers agreed to work for free, but apparently that wasn't enough -- so school's out.

That's the latest in Buena Vista, Mich., a school district of less than 500 students that closed its schools Tuesday because it is broke. At an emergency meeting Monday evening, hours after teachers...

A small school district in Michigan has run out of money to pay its teachers. But the school year isn't over until June 23.

The Buena Vista Education Association convened most of its 27 teachers on Monday for what some described as an emotional meeting. They voted to continue teaching,...

Dennis Van Roekel, the president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, came out in favor of a two-year moratorium on adverse consequences for schools and teachers that have been proposed in connection with the Common Core State Standards in an interview with The Huffington Post Tuesday.

As droves of states wiggle out from some of the toughest components of the much-maligned federal No Child Left Behind Act, school districts in states that were denied waivers from the law's strictures want a piece of the action. Not so fast, says a coalition of eight civil...

States are drastically underfunding programs for their youngest learners now more than ever, according to a report released Monday, even as researchers and policymakers increasingly point to pre-school as a ladder to the middle class.

Funding per student for state pre-school programs has reached its lowest point in...

Fewer than half of high school seniors are proficient in economics, according to the results of the 2012 National Assessment of Educational Progress exam released Wednesday. This statistic is causing alarm among educators and advocates, especially in an era marked by economic crisis.

"I was shocked," said Edward...

After a week of April vacation bookended by a tragic marathon bombing and a manhunt that killed one suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and brought the other, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, into custody, Monday marks a return to class for students of Boston Public Schools.

While the district is focused on...

Bayli Silberstein, an eighth-grade student in a Florida public school, saw it firsthand.

Her friends, she said, were routinely bullied for their sexual orientation. "Watching it tear apart my friends is what scared me the most. It's not right, I don't like it, and I don't see my friends...

Carole Tedesco, an attorney from Winchester, Mass., was sitting in the Prudential Skywalk watching the Boston Marathon with her children when she heard the blasts, just seconds apart.

Her kids, Luca, 9, and Isabella, 8, thought it was thunder. Carole knew it wasn't. She thought the building might have been...

In light of the Boston marathon explosion Monday, Carol Johnson, superintendent of Boston Public Schools, sent a memo to school families and staffers with guidance on how to talk to kids about tragedies. (The students are out for vacation this week).

Johnson forwarded recommendations from...

More than five years after Michelle Rhee took over Washington, D.C., public schools, and nearly three years after she left her position as chancellor, critics are still looking for closure and demanding a more rigorous investigation of the seeming rise in student test scores under her reign.

In what's become...

For the last few months, teachers in America's military schools have scrambled to understand how across-the-board cuts to the Department of Defense, or sequestration, would affect their schools.

Like other military employees, teachers expected furloughs. Parents wondered whether there would be school on Fridays or...