Harvard Graduate School of Education's Meira Levinson argues that recovering the civic purposes of public schools will take more than tweaking their curricula. Drawing on political theory, empirical research and her own experience from teaching at an all-black middle school in Atlanta, Levinson calls on schools to remake civic education.

The number of schools ranked highly in guides such as Barron's Profiles of American Colleges is increasing, without any evidence that these schools' instructional quality is also increasing. Applicants and their families should be wary of letting these rankings serve as the main criteria in their college decisions.

Have efforts to cultivate "vocational" citizenship skills failed to satisfy the broader obligation of schools to cultivate the next generation of citizens and civic leaders?

Once little more than a blip on the radar of American higher education, for-profit colleges now enroll about 1 in 10 of the nation’s postsecondary students. And this fast growth has not gone unremarked. The past year has brought unprecedented scrutiny and often harsh criticism of proprietary education from policy makers, regulators, and the news media.

Under the banner of the American Educational Research Association, roughly 20,000 researchers will convene in Vancouver to report on research that can help fuel student learning and improve schools. If only they knew what wasn't enough.

We estimate that public-school teachers receive total compensation roughly 50 percent higher than they would likely receive in the private sector.

The observations and experiences of interviewees who have worked in both for-profit and not-for-profit higher education suggest that traditional colleges and universities will be badly mistaken if they assume that the travails of for-profits today mean that useful lessons cannot be drawn from their successes to date—and those likely to occur in the future.

American students are less proficient in their nation's history than any other subject. If creating good citizens who understand the workings of their government is a national goal, schools need to do better.