Wisconsin Superintendent Tony Evers met with educators, students, parents, and community members in Milwaukee to discuss “what to expect when you’re expecting more budget cuts.” He stressed the "three R's of fair funding" (reinvesting, reforming and restoring) and said that until the state prioritizes children and begins reinvesting in their education, the economy will remain sluggish.

 Education advocates met in Madison, WI, for the first ever Wisconsin Opportunity to Learn conference, kicking off a statewide campaign fighting to ensure that schools and students get the resources they need to succeed.

During Tuesday night's State of the Union Address, President Obama touched on education issues at several points in his speech. The Schott Foundation for Public Education today released its response to the President's education message.

Robert Balfanz and his colleagues have drawn our attention to high schools where nearly half of students do not graduate with their peers.  The enrollment in these schools is overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic, and the concentration of Black students in urban drop-out factories is a significant contributor to the nation’s low educational attainment for male Black students and the wide achievement gap between these most vulnerable students and others.

The story behind calculating Florida's extraordinary graduation rates.

A Texas superintendent's diagnosis is that our relatively poor educational outcomes and large gaps in achievement are rooted in socioeconomic inequity; that if attention is paid to curing that problem, the schools will be able to do the rest. Meanwhile, a New York Times article highlights how the military's schools seem to have figured out a way to equalize the playing field for students. What seems to be the answer? Small classes, good housing and health care, integration.

The simple fact is that as a result of Walker’s budget, Wisconsin is in a situation where, for the first time ever, the quality of the state’s schools will be worse for current and future generations of students than it was for the generation that preceded them.

While it might seem encouraging for education and civil rights leaders to assert that poverty isn’t an obstacle to higher student achievement, the evidence does not support such claims. Over 50 years, numerous studies have documented how poverty and related social conditions – such as lack of access to health care, early childhood education and stable housing – affect child development and student achievement. The research never suggests that poor children are incapable of learning or that poverty itself should be regarded as a learning disability. Rather, research suggests that poor children encounter obstacles that often adversely affect their development and learning outcomes.