Claudio Sanchez

President-elect Barack Obama is said to have chosen Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan to serve as education secretary. Duncan has run the country's third-biggest school district for the past seven years. He has focused on improving struggling schools, closing those that fail and getting better teachers.

The No Child Left Behind Act — which Congress approved with overwhelming bipartisan support — is now drawing sharp bipartisan opposition. The law is up for reauthorization, and many — including those who originally supported it — are pointing out its flaws.

The late Albert Shanker, a teachers union president, argued vigorously that the unions — which politicans have blamed for standing in the way of reforms — needed to prove their critics wrong. A new book examines why his ideas have had such a lasting impact on schools, unions and politics.

Public schools perform favorably with private schools when students' income and socio-economic status are taken into account, according to a new report from the U.S. Education Department. The findings counter a popularly held notion, that private schools outperform public schools.

This week, the U.S. Department of Education threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal school aid from California because the state has failed to help students transfer out of low-performing schools, as required by the No Child Left Behind law.

The No Child Left Behind education law mandates that by year's end, every state should have ensured that every teacher is "highly qualified." Yet no state has met the federal government's requirements under this provision.

The scoring problems this year with the SAT have had repercussions for students and colleges across the nation, and have already sparked lawsuits.

The announcement Tuesday that Harvard University President Lawrence Summers is resigning points to the difficulties of running a high-profile university, and the need to balance many constituencies: alumni, governing board, faculty and students.

Four years after the No Child Left Behind Act became law, test results show progress in some areas. But many schools are not reducing the achievement gap between white and minority students, and closing that gap may take longer than the law's requirements.

Nearly four years after the No Child Left Behind Act took effect, the nation's urban school districts are making only slight progress in raising test scores, and no progress in reducing the achievement gap between white and minority students.