The state's two virtual charter schools have earned poor marks from the state's accountability system in the few years they've been operating.

A collection of short news stories from this week.

Cursive writing is experiencing a resurgence of sorts in North Carolina elementary schools thanks to a state law that was passed in 2013.

States are tweaking voter registration laws for teenage voters and schools are busing students to the polls. Will these efforts help young people get in the habit of voting?

Thousands of North Carolina teachers will take leave on May 16 to protest at the state capitol, forcing some school districts to close.

Watch a discussion between three educators who ran for their state legislatures about their experiences on the campaign trail.

A $12.2 million dollar grant from the state Department of Public Instruction will go to a program based at North Carolina State University to provide additional training literacy training to teachers in 16 high-needs districts across the state.

Principals and superintendents are caught between politicians’ demands, an anxious public, and experts’ contrary advice about the path forward during the pandemic. The unspoken message: You’re on your own.

The Oklahoma Education Association has ended the nine-day statewide walkout, saying legislators are unwilling to consider any additional revenue-raising measures.

"Teaching is a political act," argues teacher-turned-politician John Waldron. And it's going to take more organizing to rescue public education.

Building science lessons around phenomena that students know equally and can see in their own lives is making the subject more relevant and interesting.

Despite a $6,100 teacher pay raise this spring, school districts report that they're starting the new academic year with nearly 500 teaching vacancies.

The West Virginia teachers strike is over, but the fight for teacher pay rages on, write Lawrence Baines and Jim Machell.

A small school district in Oklahoma plans to offer low-cost daycare services to its employees next year in an effort to better compete with larger districts when it comes to recruiting and retaining teachers.

The governors of Oklahoma and South Carolina have directed significant portions of their states' federal education relief aid to fund private school scholarships.

Spending millions to guard against COVID-19 spread, district leaders also must convince parents school buildings are safe.

Writing in dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said a lower court had disrupted state property tax revenue for schools and other government services.

A collection of stories from the previous week that you may have missed.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage says he plans to forgo the process of selecting a new commissioner for the state education department and will instead take on the role himself.

Teachers felt that iPads "provide no educational function in the classroom" and are often used to play games in class.

Middle and high schools in Maine are returning their iPads and switching back to laptops after a survey found that 88.5 percent of teachers and 74 percent of students in one district preferred laptops for schoolwork and instruction, reports the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal.

The rocky shift to remote learning has exacerbated inequities for the nation's 5 million English-learners. An army of multilingual liaisons work round the clock to plug widening gaps.

The justices declined to take up a major challenge to exclusive-bargaining arrangements for teachers' unions and other public employee labor organizations.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit turns away claims of religious discrimination by families seeking to use Maine's "tuitioning" program.

Eliminating gifted programs all together is the wrong solution to fixing racial and economic imbalances, argues James R. Delisle.

The U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights said that some students were placed in self-contained special education settings without an individualized justification for doing so.

Students at Bellevue Elementary in Syracuse, N.Y., spend an extra 70 minutes at school each day, and their principal says the extended school day has improved their academic performance.

Private schools in New York soon will be required to report suspected sexual abuse of students in their schools to law enforcement, bringing the independent schools under the same rules as public schools.

Students returning to schools in Virginia and New York this fall will be required to participate in mental-health education as part of their health and physical education courses.

The state will be required to test all students using grade level tests, except for those with significant cognitive disabilities.

The New York state legislature passed a bill that would make the use of state test scores in these evaluations optional, leaving the decision up to districts and making it subject to collective bargaining.

More than half of all states have ordered schools closed for multiple weeks to help slow the pandemic.

A collection of articles you may have missed from the previous week.

A Nebraska senator introduced a bill that would give teachers legal cover to physically restraint disruptive students, prompting a strong positive response from members of the state teachers' union.

A school cook in Nebraska was canned after he mixed kangaroo meat into chili made for students.

Nebraska's education department released an interactive instructional materials map last week, showing what curricula districts have adopted for English-language arts, math, and K-8 science.

This poem pays tribute to the more than 400 teachers, principals, bus drivers, custodians, and other staff members we have lost to the pandemic so far.

It's worth remembering how far we've come on educating students with disabilities, writes Nebraska's education commissioner Matthew L. Blomstedt.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has joined a private school in a lawsuit against Gov. Andy Beshear, arguing that a school closure order not only violated state law but also the First Amendment.