A collection of short news stories from this week.

An internationally known gifted-education center is scouting—and helping to develop—gifted students in after-school programs and pullout classes in one of Maryland’s most challenged school districts.

This Quality Counts 2020 Highlights Report captures all the data you need to assess your state's performance on key educational outcomes.

Schools may have to continue closures in the fall if the coronavirus resurges, state schools chiefs in Maryland and Washington said. The warnings came the same week thata key federal official predicted schools would be able to reopen for the 2020-21 school year.

While most teachers have online access at home, internet service for many educators in rural areas is spotty, expensive, or nonexistent.

A task force is recommending that the state lowers the score required on the controversial national edTPA exam.

New York, which has had a politically contentious history assessing its students, will seek three waivers from how the Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to test students.

The city's prekindergarten program is approaching universal access, which was a campaign promise of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who convinced the state legislature to provide $300 million to help launch it.

To give districts more flexibility in the face of teacher shortages, New York's education department is proposing to modify its regulations on teacher certifications.

The proposed legislation would require the 1.1-million student district to publish the source code behind algorithms used to assign students to high schools, evaluate teachers, and more.

The two Upstate New York districts are venturing beyond the largely white region to tap a more diverse pool of educators.

New York state is considering adopting a new set of K-12 reading and math standards that differ somewhat from the Common Core State Standards, which have had rocky reception in the state since they went into place in 2010.

The U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights said that some students were placed in self-contained special education settings without an individualized justification for doing so.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos railed against state constitutional prohibitions on public funds going to religious institutions in a speech to the Alfred E. Smith Foundation in New York City.

New York will require some districts next year to have their school-by-school spending amounts approved by the state, an effort to assure that state funds are being distributed as intended.

The state will be required to test all students using grade level tests, except for those with significant cognitive disabilities.

Private schools in New York soon will be required to report suspected sexual abuse of students in their schools to law enforcement, bringing the independent schools under the same rules as public schools.

The New York state legislature passed a bill that would make the use of state test scores in these evaluations optional, leaving the decision up to districts and making it subject to collective bargaining.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed back on the Mayor Bill de Blasio's announcement, however, saying "no decision" had been made about reopening schools in New York City or elsewhere in the state.

New York’s schools and colleges will remain shut through the end of the academic year because of the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday.

More than half of all states have ordered schools closed for multiple weeks to help slow the pandemic.

Hopson became the interim superintendent in Shelby County, Tenn., in 2013 after the Memphis City School system merged with Shelby County schools. That merger then led six suburban communities to break away from the merged school system to form their own school districts.

Teachers in Tennessee have an important voice in shaping state initiatives and policies.

A school district in Tennessee says it no longer wants teachers to use crowdfunding websites to get extra school supplies.

Tupac Mosley overcame homelessness to graduate as valedictorian, writes Jonathan E. Collins, but there’s an overlooked part of his inspirational story: policy.

This Quality Counts 2019 Highlights Report captures all the data you need to assess your state's performance on key educational outcomes.

This Quality Counts 2020 Highlights Report captures all the data you need to assess your state's performance on key educational outcomes.

Two Republican legislators in Colorado have introduced a bill that would enact harsh consequences, including jail time, for teachers and teachers' unions who go on strike.

Colorado will no longer administer the full PARCC exam to students.

Dozens of Colorado school districts are asking voters next month for more funding for education through bond issues, mill levy overrides, or renewal of a city sales tax.

Teachers and other education advocates hope that tax-wary voters will be willing to approve an amendment that would pour more than $1.6 billion more into schools each year.

Teachers in Colorado forced at least one school district to close as they rallied at the capitol to call for more education funding.

The final version of the bill reduces the cost-of-living raises and increases employee contributions to their retirement, among other changes.

This Quality Counts 2019 Highlights Report captures all the data you need to assess your state's performance on key educational outcomes.

Frank DeAngelis, who was the principal of Columbine High School from 1996-2014, talks about the steps he took to heal students and staff in the wake of the school shooting.

The STEM School shooting underscores the huge challenges educators face in keeping students safe, even as fatal and injurious gunfire inside K-12 schools remains statistically rare.

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who helped initiate a shakeup of Denver Public Schools, has announced that he's running for president as a Democrat in 2020.

In the wake of anti-immigrant violence, we must help make sure that all students feel welcomed, writes Susana Cordova.

This Quality Counts 2019 Highlights Report captures all the data you need to assess your state's performance on key educational outcomes.

All 46 schools in the Mesa County Valley School District closed last Thursday and Friday after students and staff at more than a dozen schools experienced norovirus-like symptoms.

Students engaged in a protest against a culture they saw as punitive; their principal suspended them. What did a court say?

This Quality Counts 2020 Highlights Report captures all the data you need to assess your state's performance on key educational outcomes.

While most teachers have online access at home, internet service for many educators in rural areas is spotty, expensive, or nonexistent.

The decision by a federal appeals court recognizing the right to a basic minimum education may be felt far beyond the substandard Detroit schools underlying it, but hurdles could remain.