Christmas seems to have come early this year for education advocates. After weeks of long and hard negotiations, House and Senate lawmakers have reached preliminary agreement on a bill to reauthorize the very long-stalled No Child Left Behind Act, multiple sources say.

The latest Education Department report on the federal School Improvement Grant program paints an uneven picture of SIG's impact, just as Congress is about to decide its fate.

The Education Department says all states in the competitive-grant program made progress toward their goals, but makes little mention of areas where they stumbled or backtracked.

Lawmakers in both parties—but especially Republicans—are really unhappy with the way Duncan and Company used Race to the Top, and especially, waivers from many of the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act.

If you tuned into the Tuesday night GOP presidential debate hoping for education policy talk, once again, you got very meager scraps.

Good news for Louisiana: The state can keep its waiver from many of the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act for another school year. But what's the bad news?

"Governors understand that early childhood education is a key component of building a literate, knowledgeable and skilled 21st century workforce," Govs. Jay Inslee and Robert Bentley wrote to the four congressional representatives.

"Progress Is No Accident: Why ESEA Can't Backtrack on High School Graduation Rates" also reports that the number of high school "dropout factories" has also declined significantly in recent years.

Title I aid, the largest single federal grant program for public schools, is at the center of many of them, but it's not the only horse on the race track.

Over the weekend Hillary Clinton, a longtime charter fan, had some tough words for charters, specifically when it comes to equity. And that sent the internet into a bit of a tail spin.