Eric Westervelt

A judge ruled Tuesday that California's laws deprive students of their constitutional right to an education.

Join the Band.

Next week we're going to spend a little time with a public school band that rocks, swings, and breaks new musical ground.

This isn't your typical high school group. The members make music by combining traditional instruments with iPad tablet computers and apps. Oh, and all the ...

Speakers bow out amid protests. Colleges continue their obsession with celebrity speakers. As this year's graduation season churns on, is it time to rethink this once noble tradition that many schools now see as a marketing opportunity?

In Newark, the New Jersey city held its first mayoral election since Cory Booker left for the U.S. Senate. Ras Baraka won, and Sarah Gonzalez of WNYC explains how the mayor-elect plans to run Newark.

In a string of commencement-speaker dropouts, would-be honorary guests are being pushed out by campus protests. Meanwhile, schools are trying to boost their reputations and promote diverse ideas.

To help low-income families, some think high-quality early education is key; others argue it's support for parents with job training and education. A program called Career Advance is doing both.

One nonprofit in Tulsa has flipped the script on preschool. The Community Action Project says its premise simple: To help kids, it says, you often have to help their parents.

San Francisco's library system has hired a full-time social worker to help find housing and other services for the homeless men and women who've set up camp among the stacks.

President Obama has called repeatedly on Congress to help states pay for "high-quality preschool" for all. In fact, those two words — "high quality" — appear time and again in the president's prepared remarks. They are also a refrain among early childhood education advocates and researchers. But what do they ...

In reporting on students navigating the maze of college costs and financial aid, I kept running into misconceptions about paying for a degree. Here are some of the most common ones:

Low-income students get most of their college financial aid needs met and rich kids don't have to worry, ...

Over 20 years, the average burden for a four-year college graduate in the U.S. has gone from $9,000 to $30,000. The percentage of students with debt has shot up from about half to nearly 70 percent.

Most parents of elementary school-age children say their schools boosted security following last year's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., according to a poll from NPR in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.

The poll was the

It's lunchtime at Oakland High School in Oakland, Calif., and that means fence hoppers. Several kids wear mischievous grins as they speedily scale a 12-foot-high metal perimeter.

In theory, anyway, Oakland High is a "closed campus." That's done in the interest of safety and security and to cut down on ...

This is the second in a three-part report on Philadelphia schools in crisis.

Philadelphia's Center City area sparkles with new restaurants, jobs and money. After declining for half a century, the city's population grew from 2006 to 2012.

But for people living in concentrated poverty in large swaths of North ...

It's recess time at Ruby Bridges Elementary School and a third-grader is pummeling a plastic tetherball with focused intensity. He's playing at one of more than a half-dozen recess play stations on the school's sprawling cement playground — there's also wall ball, basketball, capture the flag, sharks and minnows, a ...

This week on All Tech, we're exploring kids and technology with posts and radio pieces about raising digital natives. Look back at the stories and share your thoughts and ideas in the comments, by email or tweet.

Parents pack into a gym at Cahuilla Desert Academy, ...

A growing number of school districts across America are trying to weave tablet computers, like the iPad, into the classroom fabric, especially as a tool to help implement the new Common Core state standards for math and reading.

One of California's poorest school districts, the Coachella Valley Unified southeast ...

Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have different ideas about how to address Europe's financial turmoil. Their relationship will help set the tone for what happens next in Europe.

Laws in Hungary have criminalized homelessness at a time when the country is in financial crisis and poverty is on the rise. Homeless advocates say the laws are too harsh, but propone...