As congressional Democrats declared last week that federal efforts to help Gulf Coast schools with hurricane recovery aren't working, school officials from the region hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year urged lawmakers to provide more regulatory flexibility and more money. On April 26, 2006, House Democrats released a report criticizing…

With the departure in January 2006 of the first head of the Department of Education's office of innovation and improvement, those who follow the 3 and a half-year-old-office are wondering whether it will continue to play a prominent role in federal policy or whether its influence will fade. Nina Shokraii Rees, a former aide to Vice President Dick…

The U.S. Department of Education gave more than $5.7 million in bonuses to its employees, including a student-aid official who got $71,250. In the 2003 calendar year, more than 75 percent of the department's employees received bonuses, with political appointees among the recipients. Each year, the department gives some employees cash awards on top…

Under President Bush's proposed fiscal 2006 budget, the federal Head Start program would get a $45 million increase in funding. That money, however, would go for a project involving only a handful of states, not to increase the main program educating preschoolers. The proposed increase to Head Start's fiscal 2005 budget of $6.84 billion would go…

This article reports on the aggressive and sometimes creative steps the Education Department has taken, since President Bush came to town in 2001, to promote its agenda to the public, including its support for school choice options such as charter schools and for Mr. Bush's signature program, the No Child Left Behind Act. The department has spent…

This article discusses President Bush's budget cut on education spending. The president's blueprint for federal education spending in the next fiscal year includes a high-profile plan to boost math and science education, new money for private school vouchers, a renewed push to improve high schools--and the most drastic cut in Department of…