Susan Sawyers

Teaching can be a tough job. To wind down 2011, we asked some first-year public school teachers to tell us what they've learned now that they have some experience in the classroom. Some of them are traditionally trained with advanced degrees in education. Others have taken an alternate route, including...

Today's favorable income tax rates make it attractive for the mega-rich to give their dollars away. But how much of this private funding for social good wields influence over public policy? If and when it does, especially given budget shortfalls in public education, is this bad? Add to that the...

It's well known that private entities, including the Broad, Gates and the Walton Family foundations, fund public education initiatives and reforms. "Given the scale and scope of the largess, some worry that the [Gates] foundation's assertive philanthropy is squelching independent thought," wrote Sam Dillon for the New York...

Last week's "Run with Champions" not only gave kids time to be active but also offered them a chance to meet those who've stuck with it. Elite athletes, including Geoffrey Mutai, record-breaking winner of Sunday's marathon and the 2011 Boston Marathon, Christie Dawes, Sarah...

Saturday's combination of wet, heavy snow, leafy trees and high winds was the perfect storm. Close to 400 acres, half of Central Park, were affected and nearly 1,000 trees will be lost as a result according to an email I received from Doug Blonsky, the president of...

Fenton Communications Chief Change Officer Lisa Witter (@lisamwitter) with Archbishop Desmond Tutu (@TheElders)...

If you genuinely care at all about public education, run, do NOT walk, to see Obie Award-winning actress Nilaja Sun in No Child... at the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village. Sun's...

Like it or not, technology in education is here to stay. As the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) annual conference is underway in Philadelphia this week, Chief Executive Officer Don Knezek functions as a teacher, an advocate and a community builder. He...

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the founding of Teach for America, the training ground for recent college graduates who compete to teach in some of the nation's most high-needs schools (READ: the nation's poorest urban and rural districts), TFA Founder and Leader Wendy...

Now that I'm a New Yorker, the Park Avenue malls are as close to having a garden as I'll get. Saturday morning, while the temperatures hovered in the teens, I witnessed Will Ryman's playful urban Eden - 25-foot stemmed

The "what will she do next" guessing game came to an end this week when Florida's Republican Governor-elect Rick Scott named Michelle Rhee," the former chancellor of the District of Columbia school system, to an 18-member transition team on education.

Scott said the...

Academic, non-academic and the culture of our institutions. Sir Ken Robinson, author and thinker on creativity and innovation, weighs in on the troubles endemic to public education in these times. "Our children are living in the most stimulating period in the history of the earth," says Robinson. "We...

Not much has changed when it comes to classroom design compared to a century ago. But given our flat world, isn't it time for the setting to evolve?

This month, SLATE invites the public to rethink...

With all the advance hype, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten took on via email Davis Guggenheim's soon-to-be-released education documentary "Waiting for Superman." It's not the first time she's voiced discontent on the subject and it likely won't be the last as she describes the...

Since the levees broke, independently run New Orleans charter schools educate more than 60 percent of the students compared to about three percent nationally.

To help pay the bills, New Orleans will receive a $1.8 billion reimbursement for schools that were...

In mid-August, Congress signed off on a bill that will steer $10 billion into schools across the nation, a measure aimed at preventing teacher layoffs. And now there's more, this time to support state education reforms.

The winners in the second round...

A round-up of the week's education stories brought to you by The Hechinger Report.

Although it's still summer in the city, student achievement and teacher effectiveness made a media splash. My personal favorites -digital learning and promise neighborhoods - also garnered...

A round-up of this week's education stories brought to you by The Hechinger Report.

The word from Washington centered on the passage of an emergency bill dubbed EDUJOBS to preserve... education...

With state and local budgets still in flux, it's hard to know exactly how many teachers will or won't lose their jobs this year. As Congress prepared to pass a $10 billion measure to prevent thousands of teacher layoffs, some people asked if the money would be spent...

A round-up of this week's education stories brought to you by The Hechinger Report.

Education in our nation has at its heart race, class, privilege, politics and, oh yeah, people. Take a moment to scroll through some...