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.

A devastating tornado struck Joplin, Missouri, on May 22 of this year. One hundred sixty people were killed, and nearly a thousand were injured. According to the National Weather Service, as much as 75 percent of the city was damaged. Three days later, Susan Moore and Regina Jones, two Joplin public school teachers, joined The Takeaway to discuss its effects on the city's schools, which were closed for the remainder of the school year. Scott Meeker, enterprise editor of the Joplin Globe, also came on the program to discuss his efforts to reconnect people over Facebook. The Takeaway speaks to them again for an update on Joplin many months after the storm.

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.

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.

Last week, The Takeaway reported on an Alabama immigration law that is considered on of the toughest in the nation. A federal judge upheld the law in a challenge by the Justice Department. Among its provisions, the law requires Alabama's public schools to check the legal documentation of its students. Since the law went into effect on Thursday, over 200 Latino students went missing from schools in Huntsville. The law does not give schools the right to turn away children. Schools are only required to report to the state if a child cannot produce legal documentation.

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.

As students across the nation head back to school, The Takeaway presents a special report on education this week. Today, we focus on budget cuts. As states continue to take in less revenue, public schools around the country are seeing their budgets slashed. It's the principal's job to examine a budget, and distribute available funding in a way that's in the best interest for the students.

All over the country, 50 million public school students will head back to school this week.  And so today, we’re starting a week-long special look into the state of education in America in 2011. Today, we're talking about shrinking school budgets. State budgets have been feeling the squeeze since 2008, and with stimulus money running out, this is the year when schools are really having to tighten their belts. Later this week, we'll talk about the No Child Left Behind Act's looming deadlines, which require that by 2014, 100 percent of students will test at grade level in reading and math.

As one of the hallmark pieces of education legislation passed by President George W. Bush, The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 aimed to reform the American education system by giving schools standard and measurable goals that 100 percent of all students needed to meet. But, by promising to leave no child behind, did the act set its goals too far? 

American Sign Language could be a dying form of communication, thanks to dwindling education funding and technological alternatives. Many deaf people are adamant that sign language will always be essential, but state budget cuts are threatening to close schools that teach it. This adds to the existing debate in the deaf community, between those who communicate with sounds and high-tech cochlear implants, and those who utilize sign language.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has just released a report that named principals and teachers in Atlanta's public schools who had been modifying tests and tampering with answers to improve results. The report found cheating in 44 of the 56 schools its authors examined, and 178 teachers and principals who cheated. The news will tarnish the reputation of Atlanta’s outgoing Superintendent Beverly Hall, who was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009. The large number of teachers involved has led some to call this America’s biggest teacher cheating scandal.

Students have been complaining about their teachers and principals, probably since the first schoolhouses opened. But in the Internet age, it's easy for students broadcast their frustrations publicly via social networks, and courts are now having to step in and define whether their online back talk is protected free speech.

Half a century ago, as Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington and Freedom Riders tested the desegregation of interstate buses, students at a Detroit high school stood up for their rights, and won. Finding the facilities and education at their school inferior to what was available at predominately white schools, they staged a walk-out, and refused to come back to their school until their demands were met. A new play called “Northern Lights 1966” tells their story. Starring a cast of high school students, it’s being staged by Detroit’s Mosaic Youth Theatre through this weekend.

New data from the 2010 Census has revealed surprising facts about America’s children. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of Hispanic and Asian children in the U.S. grew by 5.5 million, while the population of white children declined by 4.3 million. How have our nation's schools handled these population shifts — particularly as states slash their education budgets? How will these demographic changes affect the U.S. in the future?

Ignore the fact that neither individual has a college degree, but Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are finding themselves on opposite ends of a debate over education. Microsoft's Gates told an audience this month that learning should focus on the kind of work you want to do and that education should be geared towards "areas that actually produce jobs." Meanwhile, Apple's Jobs is espousing the benefits of the humanities: His company's success is not about technology alone, he said at a recent event, but "married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart."

The New York Times' Room for Debate blog is using the leaders of the Mac and PC worlds to frame this debate. What do you think? Are you with Jobs or Gates on this?

Is the recent Pew Poll that showed most Americans couldn’t pass a test about general world religions an argument for religious education in public schools? And if so, what would a Constitutionally acceptable religious curriculum would look? That’s the question we pose to Charles Haynes, Director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum in Washington, DC, 

Newark Public Schools, which have been rated the worst in the country, have been given an infusion of $100 million from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  The gift is a bonanza, but it is also highlights a school system in dire need. 

For women in Afghanistan, day-to-day life continues to be a struggle. It has been nearly a decade since the fall of the Taliban, yet every step forward for Afghan women seems to come with new setbacks.

Though girls now have the right to an education, getting one can be perilous. Reports over the years of schools being burnt down, teachers being beaten and beheaded, and acid being thrown at girls' faces as they walk to school can obscure signs of progress being made for women, yet they are there.

Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools, is a polarizing figure. People either love her or hate her for the way she’s tackling education reform in D.C., which ranks as one of the nation’s worst school systems.

Four years ago, the Microsoft-designed School of the Future opened its doors to Philadelphia high school students with the goal to serve as a model for 21st-century learning communities around the world.  This week, the school graduated its first class with a 100 percent college acceptance rate.  Some believe, however, there is room for improvement at the multi-million dollar partnership between Microsoft and the School District of Philadelphia.