Rocketship Schools -- currently seven in all -- are among the top performing low income schools in the state of California.

Some teachers can't cut it and don't belong in classrooms, but the vast majority of them I have observed in 38 years as a reporter are hardworking and dedicated. They want to succeed.

To build an education system for the 21st century, we must get back to our roots and visualize schools that are worthy of American democracy.

I just wanted to drop in and "blog" -- it's mostly a showcasing of videos, hence it being in quotes -- about two of our recent pieces for PBS NewsHou...

Remember pot-luck suppers, when everyone brought a dish or two? What follows is the the equivalent -- although substituting ideas for food. Because t...

For many public school students and perhaps for teachers as well, April is the cruelest month of the school calendar. April days that are not devoted to 'test prep' are spent on testing itself. And some of what is going on in this crazy month defies the imagination.

Stressing the basics is no way to make sure that we will produce people to create the future. We need schools that encourage the imagination, that allow and support deep learning, and that fan the sparks of creativity -- not stomp out the fires.

In the face of this disheartening news, one has to ask, "who benefits?" I'm stumped. Certainly not children, parents and teachers.

We need to make it more difficult to become a teacher, which we could do by raising standards for admission into training programs and then providing one-year apprenticeships before teachers are given their own classrooms.

"My son can't sleep at night." Why? "Because his teacher told him that he had to do well on the tests this week or she would be fired.." Scaring the sleep out of a child is surely an example of distortion and corruption. So too is firing people based on the snapshot of one day's bubble test score.

Schools today must provide opportunities for young people to create knowledge out of the swirling clouds of information that surround them 24/7. You went to school because that's where the knowledge was stored. That was yesterday.

The real problem is not the Constitution's limits on the federal role in education. For all its talk of public education as 'the civil rights issue of our time," this Administration, like the one before it, simply does not have a powerful vision of what genuine education might be.

Why is the notion of trying to give poor kids the opportunities that rich kids take for granted anti-American?

I am still searching for the one right word to describe teachers today. Reviewing the candidates: competitors, policemen, social workers, surrogate parents, counselors, health care providers, nutritionists and ringmasters.

When California Governor Jerry Brown recently called for fewer standardized tests and less time on test preparation, he probably expected to be praised. Instead, his proposal has been greeted with cries of outrage from teachers, administrators, and students.

With 2012 off to a strong start, we wanted to quickly look back on 2011 and showcase some of the production work that my organization, Learning Matters, did last year.

Lately I have been lying awake at night thinking about basic skills. To be precise, I am wondering what you -- or I -- would do if we were in charge of getting America "back to basics" in education.

Because this is an election year, the politics of public education are even crazier than usual, meaning that serious debate over the federal role in education won't occur in 2012.

One of the best ways to see what is happening in education is with documentaries and videos and one of the best creators of these documentaries is outstanding education reporter John Merrow on Learning Matters.

Federal legislation punishes entire schools for not making 'adequate yearly progress.' So why not create some carrots to go along with the stick? How about 'OYP' for 'Outstanding Yearly Progress?'

To kick-start American Education Week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will host a Twitter town hall today at 5 p.m. EST. John Merrow, educati...