leadership

Baby boomers are aging out of education jobs in large numbers, and school superintendents are no exception, said Jim Buckheight, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, which focuses on superintendents. As a result, four new superintendents and at least eight new principals greeted students this school year. It’s not an unusually high number, say two statewide groups for superintendents and principals.

In a strong show of support for public schools statewide, more than 80 school superintendents came together in Oklahoma City to protest Oklahoma’s new A through F grading system designed to hold schools accountable for education.

Forty volunteers, including the leader of an Orangeburg, S.C. school district, knocked on doors as they tried to get students who haven't gone to class this school year to return to their studies.

Did we learn anything from Clayton’s earlier woes or does the latest friction point to the larger problem of having citizens run school systems?

Following a couple of years of job losses, Minnesota schools are hiring more people. Nearly 107,000 people were on the school districts' payroll in August, an increase of 7.6 percent over the same month last year.

Ahead of a second closed-door meeting scheduled by the Wake County School Board to discuss "confidential personnel matters," board member Chris Malone told ABC11 in an on-camera interview that it was highly likely Superintendent Tony Tata would be fired.

As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual pushes ahead on his promise to reform the city’s underperforming classrooms, he faces several daunting tasks: slashing an estimated $1 billion budget deficit, confronting a woefully underfunded employee pension system and finding money for the pay raises that settled the first teacher walkout in a generation. He hasn’t ruled out school closings and tax increases, both of which would be hugely unpopular.

So who might Mitt Romney pick as his education secretary should he win the November presidential election?

Here’s a list of some of the probable candidates, based on the people that Romney chose to be on his Education Policy Advisory Group, or that his campaign has used as “surrogates” to speak on education, or that are beloved by Republicans as important education reformers. In the latter category would be people such as Michelle Rhee and former Florida governor Jeb Bush and even Joel Klein.