Duncan told a rural town hall that the issue of recruiting and retaining good leaders is not 'unique to rural communities.'

States will get to keep at least $200,000 to help administer Title I and special education programs.

If you were in Minnesota for the Republican convention last year or in D.C, during the inauguration you may have been lucky enough to catch the Al and Newt Education Equality Project Show. In case you missed it, it basically involves Rev. Al Sharpton and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich high-fiving and fist-bumping and telling everyone about how their similarities on education policy transcend their differences on... just about everything else. They're pro-charter, pro-merit pay, pro-accountability, and they play well with all sorts of audiences. At the convention, a room full of conservative Republican delegates gave Sharpton a ...

So this week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a former big city superintendent, is headed up to Alaska as part of a cabinet-level push to connect with rural states. The tour has been going on all summer, but the Last Frontier is Duncan's first stop. The trip is part of a larger effort to reach out to rural America, but the education emphasis may be coming just in time to soothe some friction between rural schools and the administration. For instance, on a call last week, one rural official said he thought the competitive grant programs created under the economic ...

These states will get up to $250,000 each to hire consultants to help them complete their applications.

Detroit Public Schools' teacher union president raises the idea that his district needs to protect any education reforms that stem from its state financial takeover from being changed by future district leaders. Can the same idea be applied to stimulus reforms?

It's going to take 642 hours for each state to complete the applications, the Education Department estimates.

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has taken on a new gig, as the executive vice-president of the National Chamber Foundation, a non-profit arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has been really active on education issues for a long time, and its views tend to dovetail pretty well with Spellings'; the group has been very supportive of accountability through testing, for instance. Apparently, Spellings started serving as a senior adviser to the Chamber back in April, even as she was working as the president and CEO of Margaret Spellings and Company, a public policy ...

You would be hard-pressed to find this important group mentioned in Education Department's proposed criteria.

Jim Shelton, the Education Department's assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement, who will be spearheading the process for doling out $650 million in Investing in Innovation grants to be made available under the economic-stimulus package, gave state and local officials a clearer picture of what he's looking for on a conference call today. The official word on the Innovation grants isn't available yet. But Shelton, in a call with other top Education Department officials, said the department would be looking at student graduation, student matriculation, and student achievement in doling out the grants. And he said the department also ...