In the last 15 years, California, Arizona, and Massachusetts have all replaced bilingual education with English immersion programs as a way to address the achievement gap between native and non-native speakers. Statistics show that only 11 percent of California’s English learners reached proficiency last year. How to teach new immigrants English has become an increasingly divisive debate in classrooms across the country with politicians like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich chiming in to show their support of English immersion programs.

Along with income inequality, the president also touched on his plans to reform education in his state of the union address on Tuesday. Specifically, he mentioned how technology can make learners have more meaningful and impactful educational experiences. Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic institute joins the program to gauge the feasibility and effectiveness of such innovative uses of technology at all levels of education.

Two conversations this week on the sensitivity of certain subjects in the classroom produced lots of reaction from listeners. A ban on ethnic studies in Tuscon Arizona, and a resistance to teaching Climate Change as an accepted body of knowledge in certain school districts around the country raises a broader question. Are there pieces of history and science that are simply too hot to handle in a classroom where active debate may get away from the truth and consensus on what to teach may be hard to find?

On Tuesday the National Center for Science Education, a nonpartisan group of scientists that works to promote the instruction of evolution in American public schools, announced a new initiative aimed at teaching climate science. The NCSE claims global warming and climate change have become increasingly charged topics in classrooms around the country. The initiative is a way for teachers to be supported in states like Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Oklahoma where regulations are being considered that would require educators to justify the denial of global warming as a valid scientific position.

Earlier this month, Newt Gingrich made a lot of headlines with his thoughts on child labor laws and his policy proposal to allow children as young as 9 years old to go to work. Takeaway listeners had a lot to say about this. Among them were Bill Arnott, from Columbia, South Carolina, and Carol, from Wellesley, Massachusetts, who came on the show to their experience working as children through the prism of Gingrich's comments. (Carol asked The Takeaway not to use her last name.)

According to the U.S. Census figures from 2010, one in four African-Americans live in poverty. Less than one in five has a college degree. The question of how to help the community be upwardly mobile has been debated for decades, and it was on the mind of commentator Gene Marks when he wrote a recent commentary for Forbes called "If I Were a Poor Black Kid." "If I was a poor black kid I would get technical. I would learn software," Marks wrote. "I would learn how to write code. I would seek out courses in my high school that teaches these skills or figure out where to learn more online. I would study on my own. I would make sure my writing and communication skills stay polished." Gene Marks is neither black, nor poor, and some people wondered why he would be giving advice to those who are.

Some new numbers about the No Child Left Behind Act paint a bleak portrait of the country's education system. According to a report from the Center on Education Policy, 48 percent of the nation’s public schools did not meet No Child Left Behind's requirements for "adequate yearly progress," a percentage-based criteria for improvement set by individual states. However, students's performance on the national standardized test are not considered in AYP.

Afghani children can now watch their own version of "Sesame Street."  The new children’s series hit the screens across that country this month. The producers of the original American version of "Sesame Street" have partnered with two popular Afghan television stations to produce "Sesame Garden," or "Baghch-e-Simsim" in the local languages of Dari and Pashto. Like its American counterpart, "Sesame Garden," has a progressive message along the way. The show aims to challenge gender barriers and expand roles for women and girls. Show segments feature young girls going to school, and emphasize female role models in a variety of careers, including as doctors and engineers.

The Department of Justice has requested that school superintendents in Alabama release enrollment data that could reveal whether Latino students have stopped attending classes in the wake of recent immigration legislation. HB56, which passed the Alabama legislature this June, allows law enforcement officials to check a person's immigration status based during routine traffic stops or arrests. Initially it also required schools to report children who are in the U.S. illegally, but despite the fact this aspect of the law has been put on hold, there is evidence that many children have been staying home this academic year.

The new documentary "To Be Heard" follows the journey of three young friends through the world of the South Bronx and their experience in a life-changing writing class that teaches its students to grapple with identity, family issues, and the daily hardships of growing up in an inner-city neighborhood. 

If Michigan legislators have their way, the state could soon be home to some of the most permissive charter school regulations in the nation.

Michigan, and Detroit in particular, is widely seen as one of the epicenters for a number of experimental school reforms. The recently introduced legislation aiming to relax the cap on charter school growth, follows a move, earlier this year, that essentially placed the worst performing schools in the Detroit Public School system into a separate district. The city and the state have been rallying to overcome U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s declaration, last year, that DPS was “arguably the worst urban school district in the country.’’

But in the push to implement sweeping school reform, some veteran educators say Detroit and the state may be missing an opportunity to make student and classroom-centered changes.

From President Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation and President Obama's Race to the Top competition, to education reform experts like NCLB advocate turned critic Diane Ravitch and former Washington public schools superintendent Michelle Rhee, everyone seems to have a solution for fixing the nation's broken education system. It is easy to get lost among all these strategies, solutions and debates. But two educators have developed a strategy that they say is proven to have real results for both low-income students in charter schools and wealthy students in elite private schools.

In-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities rose 7.9 percent between the 2010-11 and 2009-10 school years. At private four-year schools, the average cost rose 4.5 percent. Are these rising costs improving education? Stephen Trachtenberg, president emeritus of George Washington University, presided over a 300 percent increase in tuition and fees over his two decades as president at GWU. He recently defended the high costs of tuition in an article for The Atlantic.

Yesterday on The Takeaway, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said one of the best ways to ensure the continued success of American democracy is to get young people engaged again. "My commercial message is let's restore the teaching of civics to the high schools so that younger generations will know how their government works," Breyer said. "They’ll know a little bit about history and they’ll understand the importance of participating in the community's life." But what does it take to get today's students excited about civic life and government?

Kelley Williams-Bolar, a mother of two girls in Akron, Ohio, served nine days in prison in January. Williams-Bolar was convicted of falsifying documents to allow her daughters to attend school in a better district than the one where they reside. She was working as a teacher's aid before the conviction and was studying to become a teacher, but having two felony charges would likely have kept that from happening — until Ohio Governor John Kasich announced he was going to reduce Williams-Bolar's convictions to misdemeanors.

A new study in Science Magazine is calling into question the logic behind single-sex schooling. The report, "The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling," says that single-sex education is "justified by weak, cherry-picked, or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence." This has stirred up controversy amongst same-sex education advocates.

The federal government wants to make school lunches healthier — which also may mean raising the cost for students in certain areas. The White House's child nutrition bill suggests costs go up by 10 cents at the most, but some places are raising prices more than that. Some people are worried that this might generate some backlash from recession-strapped families. How much should Americans have to pay for a healthy school lunch?

Throughout the course of American history, a lot has been said about marriage in the African-American community. From scientific racism to the Moynihan Report to Tyler Perry, the way we discuss marriage in black America can be difficult and often controversial. The marriage rate has declined for all Americans over the past forty years, but it’s declined much faster in the black community. Why is this?

The Takeaway has been focusing on education this week, as students have been heading back to school across the country. Today, a look at one school, Detroit's Catherine Ferguson Academy. With a $327 million deficit and huge cuts in funding and employment, the public school system in Detroit has entered worrisome times. Catherine Ferguson Academy, a unique school that caters specifically to young mothers and pregnant teenagers, was almost closed as a result of the deficit, but students, teachers, politicians, and advocates rallied to save it.

It’s back to school season, so The Takeaway is doing a special series on educational issues in America. Many school districts are facing deep budget cuts, while also feeling the pressure to raise student achievement. That puts a lot of pressure on teachers, students, and administrators alike. Today, two students whose school choir lost funding due to budget cuts last year are speaking out. Rather than throw in the towel, the students went to great lengths to try saving the choir — as well as several other extra-curricular programs at their school.