EducationNews.org

A new interdisciplinary field researches the effects of learning fine arts on a student's brain. For years, school systems across the nation dropped classes in the fine arts to concentrate on getting students to pass tests in reading and mathematics.

Marian Wagstaff, a far-sighted educator who turned a Compton school into a model of racial harmony and integrated its faculty years before the court rulings and civil rights protests of the 1950s and '60s, died April 26 at a nursing home in Santa Cruz. She was 97.

Speaking to mayors, trustees and superintendents in San Francisco, Arne Duncan challenges state lawmakers to embrace difficult reforms. 'Honestly, California has lost its way,' he says.

With California in ever-more-dire financial straits, many districts are facing further layoffs, school closures, bigger classes and possibly shortening the school year. Some may even face insolvency. After voters rejected ballot measures that would have restored state funding for schools, educators

They see no improvement since Villaraigosa took control of the school along with nine other campuses he promised to rescue. 'We basically switched one bureaucracy for another one,' one teacher says. "Your attention, please.

Jewish campuses in Southern California and across the nation are financially ailing, prompting calls for major education reforms and increased support from the wider Jewish community. At Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy in Beverly Hills, increasing numbers of cash-strapped families are asking for finan

Reform efforts underway at the district's largest campus could lead to multiple small schools operating under one roof. One thing is certain: the status quo is not an option. A winter of discontent at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys has given way to a spring of discord.