Cory Turner

I went to Los Angeles to report a story on brain science. A new study had just been released, exploring how music instruction helps kids process language. The children the researchers studied were all participants in a community music program run by the nonprofit Harmony Project.

But after ...

A new study suggests that learning to play a musical instrument helps improve the brain's ability to process language. That means music lessons could give kids from low-income communities a big boost.

In a land where police have a reputation for corruption and violence, Titus Musila is a rare officer who is popular. Now that he's accused of a vigilante killing, residents have rallied around him.

One company and its algorithms are changing the way America's schools handle classroom ethics.

Two surveys claim to capture the public's view of the Common Core State Standards. But they tell very different stories.

Same-sex-marriage activists are working to win hearts and minds in the Deep South, where they've met the strongest resistance. One strategy is to host informal conversations.

On Saturday, for our series on learning and play, I reported a story for Weekend Edition exploring this question: Should kids get a trophy for participating in organized sports? Well, it touched a nerve: comments, tweets and emails poured in — hundreds of them. So many that we thought ...

Talk about a spirited debate ...

Just Google the question, "Should kids get trophies for participation?", and the first page yields headlines like "Losing Is Good For You" and "Hell YES all the little league kids should get trophies!"

I remember collecting a shelf full of participation trophies from years ...

Dating isn't easy, and it's even less so when you've got Asperger's, an autism spectrum disorder that can make it hard to read social cues.

Jesse Saperstein knows that all too well. In his new book, "Getting a Life with Asperger's: Lessons Learned on the Bumpy Road to Adulthood," ...

And, what the adults in their lives should do about it.

With conservative commentator Glenn Beck renewing his fight against the Common Core State Standards, it's worth taking a bird's-eye view of the learning benchmarks. Where are they now...

The city is investing big in its kids, and other cities and states are taking notes.

Politicians, parents and plenty of anxious teachers have long called for a free pass on next year's tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards.

It's not that they want out of them entirely (though some do). Most simply want to be sure teachers and students aren't judged on scores ...

For educators, the challenges of Common Core are huge.

States and school districts are struggling to navigate the flood of new materials claiming to be Common Core-aligned.

Standardized tests. A lot of parents hate them because they think they're too stressful, that their kids take too many, and that a bad test could ruin hopes of Harvard.

Some teachers are dubious because they're often judged, in part, on how well kids do on these tests.

As for ...

What makes a good commencement address great? We read more than 300 speeches and singled out the qualities that made them rise to the top.

American students take an alphabet soup of mandatory and voluntary exams: SAT, PISA, AP. Sure it's a lot, but in places like Japan and England, tests are incredibly high-stress and life-defining.

For years, President Obama has been a vocal booster of early childhood education. In his past two State of the Union addresses, he has called on Congress to help fund preschool for every child in the country.

"Research shows that one of the best investments we can make in a ...

The new version of the standardized test for college admissions, set to go into effect in 2016, will do away with obscure vocabulary words and cut multiple choice answer options from five to four.