In order to strengthen state-level efforts across the country, the education reform organizations StudentsFirst and 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now (better known as 50CAN) are merging, 50CAN will announce today. The new group will be known as 50CAN, but StudentsFirst state chapters will retain their names (except in Pennsylvania, where their work overlapped). While both organizations...

When Andrea Schwartz first visited LA’s Clinton Middle School, the sight reminded her of “an insane asylum.” Paper airplanes and pencils dangled from the ceiling, and the hallways were stark white save for a sign demanding kids don’t run. The school, in Historic South-Central not far from USC, had been open for only five years, but it suffered...

It was a devastating time for the young teachers who worked at John H. Liechty Middle School near downtown Los Angeles. It was 2009, and 72 percent of the school’s teachers were handed pink slips, casualties of America’s crumbling economy. Brendan Finch, working there through Teach For America, was among those let go, though he...