Amity Shlaes criticizes the erosion of teachers' authority in the classroom.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon says controversy surrounding Greg Mortenson, the builder of of girls schools in Afghanistan, threatens to overshadow and even discredit the heroines at the heart of his work.

Amity Shlaes discusses the cartel-like privileges of U.S. schools.

Peter Orszag says that slowing the growth of health care costs may be among the best things we can do to help the next generation attend a high-quality public college.

Amity Shlaes says that the debate over the Texas State Board of Education's proposed revisions to the social studies curriculum reminds us that our current definition of balance is distorted.

In this Center for Universal Education Working Paper, Gene B. Sperling argues that there are important design elements of the existing global education architecture—the Education for All Fast Track Initiative—that reflect a promising model for a coordinated, global effort on education that should be built upon. Yet he also finds that a new Global Education Fund must employ serious reforms and have a major rebranding and relaunching moment by heads of state that mobilizes a greater global commitment to more resources and sound program implementation to make significant steps toward achieving quality universal education for the world’s poorest children.

Investing in girls’ education globally delivers huge returns for economic growth, political participation, women’s health, smaller and more sustainable families, and disease prevention, concludes a new report from the Council’s Center for Universal Education.

This report states that in the face of rapid and exponential urbanization, Latin American countries must now begin to focus on a variety of social issues. For example, while national economies are indeed growing, there are still great disparities in in-come and wealth; and though few countries can now be considered authoritarian, many still have not implemented all the changes at all levels of society which are necessary to become truly democratic.

Gene Sperling, director of CFR's Center for Universal Education, discusses how Kenya's new government is approaching education policy.

Neil Turok, physicist and founder of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, discusses how to educate talented scientists and mathematicians to help spur development in Africa.

Facing a global economic challenge, the United States should build a multilingual workforce prepared to thrive in today's world market, which would require a national initiative to improve foreign language education.

President Obama published this op-ed on education in Time magazine on October 18, 2012.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney published this op-ed on education in Time magazine on October 18, 2012.