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In an environment of tight resources, tough academic challenges, and increasingly stiff competition from new education providers, smart leadership may matter more than ever for the success of America's school districts. Against this backdrop, "Education Week" introduces the first of what will be an annual "Leaders To Learn From" report--a way to recognize forward-thinking education leaders and share their ideas. This 2013 report profiles 16 district-level leaders--superintendents, assistant superintendents, and others, including a union president--who seized on creative but practical approaches and put them to work in their school districts.

The United States has many lessons it can learn from how other countries are deploying virtual education and how it might partner up with those countries in different ways to offer a wider range of educational and cultural experiences to its students. This report, part of "Education Week's" ongoing series on virtual education, draws out many of those lessons to be learned from other countries. It also highlights some of the more distinctive virtual education partnerships emerging between schools in the United States and those outside its borders, while noting the difficulties that arise for educators and schools when taking on such initiatives.

This article discusses President Bush's budget cut on education spending. The president's blueprint for federal education spending in the next fiscal year includes a high-profile plan to boost math and science education, new money for private school vouchers, a renewed push to improve high schools--and the most drastic cut in Department of Education funding in more than a decade. Here, the author discusses the flat funding to K-12's two largest programs: Title I for low-income students and special education state grants. Among other things, she also discusses the disapproval of many education groups and federal lawmakers regarding the budget cut.

There's no doubt that President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, the two major-party candidates in the hard-fought presidential contest, part company on some education issues. President Bush, for instance, backs private school vouchers while Senator Kerry wants to see bigger spending increases for schools. This article discusses how much ground both seem to share on the fundamentals of the No Child Left Behind Act and other education policies.

Last school year, many educators were caught unprepared when schools closed in response to cases of swine flu. This time around, both the federal government and school districts are putting specific online-learning measures in place to get ready for possible closures or waves of teacher and student absences because of a flu outbreak. To prepare for the H1N1 flu virus, federal education leaders recently formed a partnership with high-tech education companies to help students access curricula online. At the district level, school officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, made sure students could send e-mail attachments to their teachers and find their homework online. And in Irving, Texas, school technology leaders are considering using video lessons that would air on the district's television channel and providing laptops for middle school students to take home. Concerns about the flu are pushing schools to use technology more heavily in their day-to-day activities and prompting them to look at creative ways of employing online learning. Schools with some e-learning tools or programs already in place are expanding or speeding up their use. Those that haven't done much with e-learning are now thinking about how technology could continue students' education in all types of scenarios, from swine flu to hurricanes to other events that put students at home for extended periods.

The closing of hundreds of U.S. schools in recent weeks because of concerns about swine flu underscores the need for administrators to make plans for continuing their students' education during any extended shutdown, emergency experts and federal officials say. Fears about a severe flu pandemic had eased as of late last week, but experts say school officials should not just breathe a sigh of relief. They should now review their emergency plans and look, in particular, at how prepared they are for using technology to provide instruction and keep lines of communication open. At the peak of concerns about the spread of swine flu, some 726 public and nonpublic schools across the country were closed, according to the Education Department. Public schools receiving federal funds under the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities program of the No Child Left Behind Act are required to have an emergency or crisis plan in place, and most public schools receive at least a small portion of funding under the act. However, the law does not lay out specific requirements for such a plan. To aid in such planning, the Education Department has a list of resources for teachers and parents that includes subject-matter lessons aligned with state standards. Those lessons can be accessed by students online. The author reports on how various school districts in California, Texas, Iowa, and Montreal have implemented plans to educate students during extended school closures.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has, over the past 12 months, tackled unrest over the No Child Left Behind law, the hurricanes' impact on schools, and "Postcards from Buster." As secretary, Ms. Spellings inherited a department stung by a scandal over federal payments to the commentator Armstrong Williams for promoting the Bush administration's signature education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, without disclosing the arrangement to the public. Ms. Spellings also faced a mounting rebellion among states unhappy with what many legislators and officials saw as the over-prescriptive and underfinanced mandates of the law. And she could not have foreseen that seven months into her tenure, a vast natural disaster would overshadow much of her first-year agenda. Despite the unexpected, Ms. Spellings said last week that she was pleased with the year's progress, particularly when it came to the No Child Left Behind law.

This article reports on the aggressive and sometimes creative steps the Education Department has taken, since President Bush came to town in 2001, to promote its agenda to the public, including its support for school choice options such as charter schools and for Mr. Bush's signature program, the No Child Left Behind Act. The department has spent millions of dollars on public communications over the last four years, including: such gimmicks as a Web mascot--an eagle named Pablo--to appeal to Latino children; an ad in a tourist map of Washington; and radio spots that ran on hiphop FM stations. The Education Department's efforts to reach out to the public have taken a number of routes, including some that strike advertising experts as a bit mystifying. In 2002, for example, the department ran ads featuring a grinning youngster at bat in each of three souvenir programs for Major League Baseball's American League and National League championship series and the World Series. Tourists visiting Washington were also targeted by the department in its No Child Left Behind blitz. In 2002, the department paid Flare Media, of Arlington, Virginia, several thousand dollars to run an ad promoting the federal law in a free map distributed by the Old Town Trolley, a popular tourist-bus system. The map, which highlights tourist sights, is stocked in hotels, visitors' centers, and airports.

This article deals with President Bush's plan to push for expanded accountability in high school. President Bush will enter his second term with a range of campaign plans on education, from expanded testing demands to new cash awards for effective teachers, only some of which are likely to become law. One thing is clear, the controversial No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, his signature initiative for schools, is here to stay. In this article, the authors present Sen. John Kerry's views and arguments on the No Child Left Behind Act. The authors also presents President Bush's set of new plans for education which are intended to build upon the No Child Left Behind Act.

This article discusses how President's Bush's proposals to expand educational accountability from the elementary and middle grades to high schools would mean more testing for teenagers, individual student plans to promote achievement, and financial incentives for teachers to help students meet their goals. Mr. Bush's campaign proposals, unveiled at the Republican National Convention, are part of a much broader wave of improvement efforts focused on high schools. At the heart of President Bush's focus on high school education is a proposed series of reading and mathematics tests in 9th, 10th, and 11th grades to help pinpoint which students may be struggling and in which areas. These tests would go beyond the current requirements under the 2- and a half-year-old No Child Left Behind Act championed by Mr. Bush.

The services in Arkansas are provided by a federal grant program intended to expand public school choice, even though many others served under the grant have never attended a public school. The U.S. Department of Education's decision to award $4.1 million over the past two years to a project involving William J. Bennett's company--which provides children with computers, art and science supplies, and textbooks--raises questions about whether the privately held, for-profit K12 Inc. benefited from political connections. An "Education Week" review of federal and state documents, as well as information from sources familiar with the grantmaking process, shows that K12 and its Arkansas partner received the grant despite the fact that one project that independent reviewers rated higher was not funded.

Widespread technical failures and interruptions of recent online testing in a number of states have shaken the confidence of educators and policymakers in high-tech assessment methods and raised serious concerns about schools' technological readiness for the coming common-core online tests. The glitches arose as many districts in the 46 states that have signed on to the Common Core State Standards are trying to ramp up their technological infrastructure to prepare for the requirement that students take online assessments starting in 2014-15. Disruptions of testing were reported across Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Oklahoma and were linked to the states' assessment providers: CTB/McGraw-Hill, in Indiana and Oklahoma; ACT Inc., in Kentucky; and the American Institutes for Research, in Minnesota. Thousands of students experienced slow loading times of test questions, students were closed out of testing in mid-answer, and some were unable to log in to the tests. Hundreds, if not thousands, of tests may be invalidated. The difficulties prompted all four states' education departments to extend testing windows, made some state lawmakers and policymakers reconsider the idea of online testing, and sent district officials into a tailspin.

Educational technology companies and entrepreneurs may face the risk of a "tech bubble," similar to the massive boom-and-bust that rocked the technology market in the late 1990s, according to market analysts and a recently released paper. A relatively new focus on K-12 educational technology as an investment vehicle, a surge of investors looking to cash in on the latest innovations, and fewer barriers to developing an ed-tech business have merged in ways that have some market observers wary of what is ahead. In "Obstacles and Opportunities for Entrepreneurs in Education," Catalano and Lunde (2012) say that though ed-tech entrepreneurs seem to be more concerned with improving education than simply making a quick profit, money may be pouring into the marketplace based on exaggerated assessments of the growth of digital learning.

Two teenage girls were arrested in Florida and charged with cyberstalking after creating a fake Facebook page impersonating another student and using it to bully her. Students at an Indianapolis high school set up false Twitter accounts for their principal and tweeted offensive comments before the account was shut down. And at a Minnesota middle school, someone created a false Facebook profile for a 6th grader and used it to make violent threats. Students' creation of fake online identities is forcing schools to deal with such behavior, which raises legal as well as school safety concerns. In fact, some behavior in such situations can now be deemed illegal under state cyberbullying laws or even cyber-impersonation and identity-theft laws. Thirty-eight states have bullying laws that include a ban on "electronic harassment" in their provisions, and 14 states have laws that expressly prohibit cyberbullying, according to the Cyberbullying Research Center, which tracks such legislation. Some states, such as New Jersey, also have identity-theft laws that have been used in cases involving fake social-networking profiles, and California, New York, and Texas all have laws against cyber or digital impersonation. While cyberbullying is often just an electronic form of such traditional bullying techniques as spreading rumors and teasing, "online impersonation is one of those new, creative ways to be really hurtful."

The author reports on a move by the online social-networking site Ning to start charging for its services which has raised worries that new fees could stifle educators' technological collaboration and creativity and touch off similar moves by other companies that provide comparable services heavily used by educators. Ning, which provides a platform for the creation of social networks, had become very popular with educators who created networks around curricular areas to trade information or bolster their skills and to interact in a closed environment with students. The company announced a new overall pricing structure for its services on May 4, but acknowledged the concerns of many educators by saying the unnamed company would cover costs for Ning's new Mini Networks. Those networks permit up to 150 members for a fee of $2.95 per month or $19.95 per year. Despite the announcement by Ning officials that an unnamed major education company would help keep the site's most basic offering free for K-12 educators, many in the field were disappointed by the company's decision to adopt a paid model. The change at Ning has educators pondering whether to shut down their networking sites, cough up a monthly fee, or move their information and members to another type of hosting platform.

Companies selling services to protect children and teenagers from sexual predators on the Internet have enlisted the help of schools and teachers to verify students' personal information. Those companies are also sharing some of the information with Web sites, which can pass it along to businesses for use in targeting advertising to young audiences. Amid continuing parental and political attention focused on keeping K-12 students safe online, some companies are providing services that aim to ensure adults can't pose as young people in cyberspace, and that minors can't claim to be older than they are. But such firms' use of schools to verify students' ages and other information worries some educators and observers. The practice, they say, raises privacy concerns--although it apparently is within the bounds of the main federal law that safeguards students' educational data--as well as ethical worries about schools' role in assisting for-profit businesses. In some cases, schools earn money by participating in the process.

This article reports that the crisis besetting U.S. and world financial markets is hitting school districts hard, as they struggle to float the bonds needed for capital projects, borrow money to ensure cash flow, and get access to investment funds locked up in troubled institutions. Some schools districts depend heavily on borrowed money to pay for capital projects such as new schools and even to tide them over while waiting for property-tax revenues to roll in. But the various investment instruments used to borrow that money are under pressure from the global freeze in the credit markets that drove the $700 billion financial-rescue package approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 3. The impact of that plan remained unclear last week, even as the stock market continued to seesaw and the Federal Reserve--working with central banks worldwide--cut interest rates in the hope of forestalling a deeper economic decline. The situation leaves school district finance officials with a basket of worries--both short-term and long-term.

The Department of Education plans to re-evaluate how many students' test scores districts and schools will be permitted to exclude when determining whether they've met annual educational goals under the No Child Left Behind Act. At a June 13, 2006 hearing before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Deputy Secretary of Education Raymond J. Simon assured lawmakers that large numbers of students' test scores were not going uncounted when it came to evaluating whether districts and schools were raising student achievement. But he also said the Education Department would hold a conference in the fall to determine whether states were excluding too many test scores to avoid sanctions under the federal law. Under the NCLB law, which President George W. Bush signed in January 2002, districts and schools much reach annual achievement goals not only overall, but also for specified subgroups of students, such as members of racial and ethnic minorities and students with disabilities.

The Department of Education's May 2, 2006 announcement of a variety of methods that high schools may use to provide a "rigorous" curriculum to allow low-income graduates to qualify for a new federal college-grant program was welcome news to those who had feared that the government's reach into the classroom was too expansive. Students who complete such a curriculum may be eligible to tap into a $790 million fund; an estimated 500,000 students will qualify for the aid in the 2006-07 academic year. The Academic Competitiveness Grants for college freshmen and sophomores and the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent, or SMART, grant program for juniors and seniors are meant to encourage students to pursue studies in mathematics, science, and certain foreign languages.

As congressional Democrats declared last week that federal efforts to help Gulf Coast schools with hurricane recovery aren't working, school officials from the region hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year urged lawmakers to provide more regulatory flexibility and more money. On April 26, 2006, House Democrats released a report criticizing the Bush administration's efforts to aid hurricane-affected schools and colleges. They said the Department of Education should name an "education recovery czar" to take responsibility away from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) because of what they see as its floundering record. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said in an interview last week that she appreciated the vote of confidence from Democrats, but said her department's role was separate from FEMA's. The Democrats' report also recommends additional flexibility, for example allowing schools recovering from the hurricanes to transfer funds between programs. And it calls for providing additional funding to those schools for basic operations and rebuilding.

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) bypassed its own policies when officials awarded a grant early in President Bush's first term that benefited a company founded by former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, as well as others to groups with close ties to the administration, federal auditors have concluded. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted three cases in which Education Department officials skirted normal grant procedures, and it found several more in which the rules were bent. In a reference to two of the grants, the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said the department "broke from established practice by altering its selection methodology after it had developed a list of grantees recommended for funding." New department procedures, however will likely prevent future problems, the GAO says. It also concludes that the agency did not violate the law in awarding the grants in question. This article presents some of the key findings from GAO's analysis of DOE's nonconformance to normal grant procedures.

A new college-grant program slipped into a pending federal budget bill could ultimately influence course offerings at high schools across the country and has stirred a debate about creeping federal authority over curricula. The legislation would create a $3.7 billion annual program of grants aimed at students from low-income families who have taken a "rigorous" high school curriculum. Modeled on a "state scholars" program in Texas, the grants would seek to encourage high school students to pursue college-level studies in mathematics, science, and certain foreign languages. The bill would give the U.S. secretary of education the authority to determine which high school curricula fit that definition. This has drawn criticism from many lawmakers who do not want the Department of Education to start directing the local business of education. The General Education Provisions Act, a federal law that broadly sketches the mission of the Department of Education, specifically bars the department from involvement in curricula. The No Child Left Behind Act adds further limits, stating that federal officials may not "mandate, direct, or control" a state, district, or school curriculum or program of instruction.

With the departure in January 2006 of the first head of the Department of Education's office of innovation and improvement, those who follow the 3 and a half-year-old-office are wondering whether it will continue to play a prominent role in federal policy or whether its influence will fade. Nina Shokraii Rees, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and a former education analyst at the Heritage Foundation, had led the office since its creation in 2002 by then--Secretary of Education Rod Paige. She had used her position to champion ideas such as charter schools, public school choice, and private school vouchers. With her departure on January 13 for a job with a private education company, the innovation office's role within the Education Department remains to be seen. Some observers say the momentum behind the office's creation has gone by the wayside since Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings took the helm of the department a year ago. "I think it has been clear for over a year that school choice and charter schools have not been top priorities for Secretary Spellings," said Michael J. Petrilli, the vice president for national programs and policy at the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and Ms. Rees' former deputy in the innovation office.

"Education Week" Staff Writer Michelle R. Davis sat down with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, on January 9, 2006, in the secretary's office at the U.S. Department of Education. This article contains excerpts from that interview. Secretary Spellings notes that being a parent of school-age children has given her an unusual perspective on the many education issue she handles.

A coalition of school, civil rights, and child-advocacy groups handed a list of 14 recommendations for changing the federal No Child Left Behind Act to congressional staff members at the U.S. Capitol early January 2006, just a day after President Bush vigorously defended the law on its fourth anniversary. Consequences of the law demand these "critical changes," Reggie Felton, the director of federal relations at the National School Boards Association, said on January 10, 2006 to more than 30 congressional staff members. The coalition aiming to alter the law hopes to influence Congress, although eliminating the law outright is not among its recommendations. "It is not a question of saying 'No' [to NCLB]," said one of the coalition's leaders, Monty Neill, the executive director of FairTest, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based group that is formally known as the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. The group is critical of the law's use of standardized tests as its fundamental measure of progress. The joint effort is called the Forum on Educational Accountability, and 67 groups have signed on to its agenda, including the National Education Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Mr. Neill said the groups want to reverse NLCB-era trends toward "narrowing the curriculum, [and] school systems pushing out students from schools in order to boost test scores."

The U.S. Department of Education in early January of 2006 sent out the first installment--more than $250 million--in education aid to states affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, just days after President Bush signed the measure into law. The $1.6 billion relief package has drawn fire from some education groups because it provides aid not just for public schools, but also for private schools, both to help get damaged schools up and running and to pay tuition costs of displaced students. But at least some public school officials said they were not troubled about the inclusion of private schools, and they expressed relief that the federal government was finally delivering on the long-debated aid package.

A shifting political landscape could significantly affect the upcoming congressional review of the No Child Left Behind Act, even as states and school districts continue to grapple with the requirements of the nearly 4-year-old federal law. The law is slated for reauthorization in 2007, and that process is starting now, at least informally, as education groups poll their members for ideas, and policymakers consider proposals for change that have already been put forward. But all sides are peering into a murky future. The players and alliances surrounding the law's renewal are sure to differ in some ways from the lineup in 2001, when a bipartisan group of legislators hammered out the current provisions with the Bush administration. Even if the reauthorization is completed on President Bush's watch, some analysts and lobbyists say it will be hard for him to hold on to the law's core mission.

The Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation is using about $2 million in federal grant money to spread a message to Indiana parents: Students in struggling public schools can seek free tutoring, find out about charter schools, or transfer to other public schools. The foundation is also taking part in a small, often overlooked federal program that sets up Parent Information and Resource Centers, or PIRCs, to help educate parents about their rights and options under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The NCLB, the centerpiece of President Bush's education agenda, authorizes and lays out the duties for PIRCs. About 80 such nonprofit centers are operating with federal grant money, with one or more in nearly every state. Critics contend that the PIRC program has become an outlet for the Bush administration's pursuit, on the sly, of an agenda that favors charter schools and private school vouchers. They say that some of the nearly 80 centers received federal grants because their ideological slant on education reflects that of the Bush administration. Samara Yudof, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said the grant process was extremely competitive. In the last round of PIRC grant awards in 2003, the department received more than 400 applications for 40 grants, she said. And out of 80 PIRCs, only a handful can be said to share the administration's ideological stance, she added.

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings called on the nation's Roman Catholic schools to become active in providing tutoring to public school students under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Under the law, public schools that fail to meet improvement goals for two consecutive years must provide transportation for students to transfer to another public school if they wish. After a third year of failing to make adequate yearly progress, districts must offer the opportunity for free after-school tutoring. Federal funding pays for the tutoring, which is being performed by a wide variety of state-approved organizations, including private tutoring companies and some religiously based groups. In this article, the author states that two Catholic school systems, run by the Diocese of Memphis and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, were approved to provide tutoring at the start of this school year, 2005. However, neither currently is tutoring any students.

A nationally watched showdown between the U.S. Department of Education and Utah state officials over the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act came down to a cliffhanger in the last days of the legislative session when a final vote on a bill that calls for state education laws to take priority over the federal law was postponed. The feud between Utah and the federal Department of Education began in 2004, when state Rep. Margaret Dayton, a Republican, introduced a bill to let Utah opt out of the law entirely, though it could have cost the state $106 million in federal aid. Under pressure from Washington, she ultimately shelved her proposal, which she perceives as an issue of states' rights. In 2005, Dayton proposed a scaled-down version that calls for the federal education law to take a back seat to state measures--following the federal law only if there is federal money to pay for its requirements. This measure passed in the Utah House, but the Senate vote was delayed at ther request of Utah Governor John Huntsman, Jr., who, after meeting with President Bush and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, decided that he needed more time to consider the Utah education bill. Observers should not mistake the delay for a truce between Utah officials, who say the federal law is too invasive, and federal officials, who say its requirements are essential to improving schools.

Utah state Representative Margaret Dayton adored President Bush. Her conservative politics lined up with his. One of her favorite memories was being at an intimate gathering and hearing the president echo her top priorities, God, family, and country. However, Dayton had drove one of Bush's biggest education-relation headaches. Dayton led a nationally watched push for Utah to opt out of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Bush's signature school reform law. Such effort failed only after federal officials traveled to Utah and helped convince Utah lawmakers that dropping out would cost the state at least $106 million in education aid. Dayton, like legislators in several other states, saw the law's raft of prescriptions as encroaching on state and local turf and imposing unwarranted costs. Dayton, who was discontented with NCLB, has approved a modified proposal that will once again draw attention to Utah and cause concerns in Washington. This article describes Dayton's modified proposal and examines why Dayton still remains resistant to the adoption of NCLB in Utah.

In the latest disclosure about the education department's public relations efforts, the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams acknowledged that he had accepted some $240,000 in federal money for ads on his syndicated television show and for other help in promoting the No Child Left Behind Act in various forums. Williams was a subcontractor under a wide-ranging, at least $700,000 contract between the Education Department and Ketchum Inc., a leading public relations firm based in New York City. Williams' contract called for the commentator, who is African-American, to help the department's outreach to minorities about the school law by providing time for Secretary of Education Rod Paige and other officials on his TV show, and for him to influence other members of the media to give favorable attention to the law. Education groups were concerned the controversy would taint public opinion about the education initiative itself. Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill called for a variety of investigations. Senators Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman and ranking minority member, respectively, of the Senate subcommittee that handles education appropriations, asked that the Education Department turn over records of recent public relations contracts. It remains unclear whether the idea to tap Mr. Williams for a contract to promote the school law originated with Ketchum or with the department. It was also unclear who in the department ultimately gave the go-ahead for it.

This article discusses President Bush's own view of promoting civil rights. Mr. Bush has sought to redefine the discussion of civil rights in education. Instead of focusing on racial integration in public schools, for instance, the president has emphasized the achievement gap between minority and white students. He has spoken of school choice as a basic right and eased federal restrictions on single-sex public education to provide another option for parents. In line with his support for religious communities, he has been attentive to discrimination based on faith. In this article, the author discusses different views from critics of the Bush administration.

This article talks about President Bush's aims of seeking accountability in high school as well as other educational goals. President Bush begins the crucial stretch of his bid for a second term with plans to build on the No Child Left Behind Act by expanding educational accountability in the high school grades. Mr. Bush stressed a theme that builds on his signature education program: Upon graduation from high school, students must be ready to go to college or be qualified to step into high-wage jobs. In this article, the authors talk about Secretary of Education Rod Paige's stand on the No Child Left Behind Act, as well as the issue on education vs. security.

The U.S. Department of Education gave more than $5.7 million in bonuses to its employees, including a student-aid official who got $71,250. In the 2003 calendar year, more than 75 percent of the department's employees received bonuses, with political appointees among the recipients. Each year, the department gives some employees cash awards on top of annual raises, a practice that spans federal agencies. While officials say bonuses are a way to reward performance and help lure employees from the private sector, critics say the practice smacks of favoritism and is not based on measurable criteria. Here, the author discusses several views and opinions of critics in the practice of doling out bonuses to reward federal workers.

This article reports on the results of a new study of the views of parents and students in Kansas and Missouri by the New York City-based research organization Public Agenda. Released September 19, the study involved a phone survey of 2,767 students and parents of public school children in grades 6-12 in the two states, with a special emphasis on the Kansas City area. Overall, only 25 percent of parents think their children should be studying more math and science, and 70 percent say things "are fine as they are now." The study concluded that though education experts, business leaders, and government officials have largely embraced the drive to raise the level of math and science courses, students and parents may be satisfied with a less rigorous level of instruction in those subjects.

President Bush continued his campaign to get schools to focus more on mathematics and science education with a visit to a middle school in Rockville, Maryland, where students study robotics and work with NASA scientists. President Bush toured the school with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings as part of his initiative to emphasize math and science education to prepare students to compete in the global job market. Parkland is one of three schools that make up the Middle School Magnet Consortium in the 139,000 Montgomery County, Maryland, school district. The consortium is financed by a $7.2 million grant from the Department of Education. Mr. Bush said the goal of his initiative is to keep America "a bold and innovative country." He noted the impending visit to the United States by President Hu Jintao of China, who arrived in Washington on April 20, as a way to call attention to the global pressure to excel in math and science.

Under President Bush's proposed fiscal 2006 budget, the federal Head Start program would get a $45 million increase in funding. That money, however, would go for a project involving only a handful of states, not to increase the main program educating preschoolers. The proposed increase to Head Start's fiscal 2005 budget of $6.84 billion would go to nine states participating in a pilot project in which they would receive their Head Start funds directly (normally, the federal money is distributed to individual Head Start programs). Critics have labeled the pilot program an attempt to dismantle Head Start, but the Bush administration has argued that the experiment would help states align and coordinate their state and federally financed pre-K programs. Head Start is among the largest of several education-related programs underwritten by agencies outside the Department of Education. This article presents the highlights of the budget proposals of some of those other agencies: Department of Health and Human Services, National Science Foundation, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Arts and Humanities Endowments, and Department of State.