U.S. Senators Edward Markey and Orrin Hatch released a "discussion draft" of a bill that would overhaul the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.

The measure has strong backing from the administration, but its political prospects are iffy at best.

The Wyoming Department of Education tells schools that it's too late for a final decision on its pending No Child Left Behind Act waiver application in time for the 2014-15 school year.

Now that the department has reversed course on a key aspect of waiver implementation dealing with teacher quality, some are wondering whether state and the feds have the bandwidth to tackle this difficult policy area.

The U.S. Department of Education made a big change to the piece of No Child Left Behind waiver implementation that has tripped up states the most: teacher evaluation.

Some states would be given extensions based on their progress on two of the three big areas of waiver implementation (standards and assessments and turnarounds).

Charter advocates say the federal charter program, which was last reauthorized along with the rest of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act back in 2001, is way overdue for an update.

The legislation calls for new or improved collection of data, and it would add a new focus on examining the implementation of a particular policy or strategy.

The stakes in keeping close watch on districts could be high for states—so far the department has put states on "high risk" status (meaning that they are in danger of losing a waiver) for problems relating to teacher evaluation.

Samuel Halperin, a longtime leader on education policy and among the architects of landmark federal laws of the 1960s, died May 6 in Washington.