By Pedro Noguera. --The challenges confronting our nation's schools are complex and cannot be solved by a few sweeping reforms or a few major investments in discrete initiatives. New approaches to educating children and managing schools and districts are needed to bring about the kinds of changes in educational outcomes that the nation so desperately needs.

Randi Weingarten was elected president of the American Federation of Teachers in Chicago on July 14, 2008. The following is an excerpt from her acceptance speech.

By Diane Ravitch. --I recently joined a new organization called Common Core, which will advocate for the subjects neglected by the federal law called No Child Left Behind as well as by the pending legislation intended to promote the so-called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

By David Reisman. --When I was in graduate school at Teachers College (a few years before the Web), Ernest Rothkopf introduced us to an interesting framework for thinking about the settings where education takes place, in the context of considering when educational technologies should be used -- he divided them up into informal settings like museums or public television stations (the “arcade”); formal educational settings like schools (“contract”); and training programs in the military and businesses (“closed”).