Our Reporting

September 1, 2014

Amherst College: An elite school reaches out

Routinely ranked among the top private schools, Amherst is leading the way among elite colleges in serving a much more diverse group of students.

August 31, 2014

Teachers embrace the Common Core

Teachers in Reno, Nevada, were skeptical of the Common Core at first. But they have embraced the new standards as a way to bring better education to students who are struggling in school -- and to kids who are ahead.

August 28, 2014

A teacher loses faith in the Common Core

New York teacher Kevin Glynn was once a big fan of the Common Core, but he says the standardized testing that's come along with it is reducing students to test scores and narrowing what gets taught in schools.

$Are you smarter than a Common Core student? Try a Common Core test$

August 27, 2014

Are you smarter than a Common Core student? Try a Common Core test

New Common Core tests are supposed to measure students' ability to think critically, analyze information, and cite evidence as well as test their conceptual understanding of mathematics and their ability to apply math to the real world. See how you'd do on a Common Core test.

August 27, 2014

Questioning the Common Core tests

In the United States, education standards come with tests. Most students haven't been tested on the Common Core yet. But in one state where they have, the controversy is so intense that it's threatening to bring down the Common Core altogether.

August 25, 2014

What is the Common Core?

The Common Core is a big change for public schools, but most Americans know little about it. Learn what Common Core is, where it came from, and why it’s become so controversial.

August 24, 2014

Read the Common Core standards

Pick up the newspaper or check out social media and you're going to find plenty of opinions about the Common Core. Decide for yourself what you think by reading the standards themselves.

August 20, 2014

Variation is key to deeper learning

Humans obviously learn a lot of things through trial-and-error. A level of "desirable difficulty" built into a learning and exam process appears to boost the overall retention of new skills or knowledge.

August 19, 2014

Learning to love tests

If there's consensus on anything in education, it's this: Tests are awful. But maybe we've been thinking about tests all wrong. Research shows that tests can actually be powerful tools for learning -- but only if teachers use them right.

August 18, 2014

This is your brain on language

For decades psychologists cautioned against raising children bilingual. They warned parents and teachers that learning a second language as a child was bad for brain development. But recent studies have found exactly the opposite.

February 12, 2011

Power and Smoke: A Nation Built on Coal

The production of electricity in America pumps out more greenhouse gases than all of our cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined, and half of our electricity comes from burning coal.

January 8, 2011

State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement

Mississippi led the South in an extraordinary battle to maintain racial segregation. Whites set up powerful citizens groups and state agencies to fight the civil rights movement. Their tactics were fierce and, for a time, very effective.

January 1, 2011

Say It Loud: A Century of Great African-American Speeches

Titled after the classic 1969 James Brown anthem, "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," this anthology illuminates the ideas and debates pulsing through the black freedom struggle from the 1960s to the present. These arguments are suffused with basic questions about what it means to be black in America.

June 1, 2010

The Great Textbook War

What should children learn in school? It's a question that's stirred debate for decades, and in 1974 it led to violent protests in West Virginia. Schools were hit by dynamite, buses were riddled with bullets, and coal mines were shut down. The fight was over a new set of textbooks.

May 12, 2009

Bridge to Somewhere

President Barack Obama wants to create jobs by building infrastructure. So did another president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to put people to work by building roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that New Deal agencies built transformed America.

October 12, 2008

Campaign '68

The 1968 presidential election was a watershed in American politics. After dominating the political landscape for more than a generation, the Democratic Party crumbled. Richard M. Nixon was elected president and a new era of Republican conservatism was born.

March 12, 2008

King's Last March

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Four decades later, King remains one of the most vivid symbols of hope for racial unity in America. But that's not the way he was viewed in the last year of his life.

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