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It was the year of the test cheating scandal.

Plans for a new teacher rating system for New York City schools that would include measures of student performance—a hallmark of national education reform efforts—were dealt a setback on Friday after negotiations broke down between the city and the teachers union.

The failure to reach an agreement before a year-end deadline had an immediate, if minimal, effect: The state suspended a program to funnel nearly $60 million in federal funds to the city to improve a small number of troubled schools. The money represents less than 0.3% of the Department of Education's annual budget.

During her first six years of teaching in this city’s struggling schools, Tiffany Johnson got a series of small raises that brought her annual salary to $63,000, from about $50,000. This year, her seventh, Ms. Johnson earns $87,000.

The Cherokee Nation lost more than $500,000 in scholarship money after losing 318 CN scholarship recipients during the 2010-11 academic school year, the period for which the latest figures are available.

And now, for some good news about education in Minnesota. December has been a good month for the state, with word that three separate streams of federal dollars are flowing into the state to improve our education system.

With recent statistics indicating that more students than ever are enrolled in charter schools, there’s no end in sight to the ongoing debate over which is more effective in educating our kids: Traditional public or charter schools. A newly released report offers potential talking points for both sides.

With one hand, Gov. Bob McDonnell touted his plan this week to pump millions more dollars over the next two years into Virginia's K-12 education system. With the other, he proposed cutting millions of dollars that will leave holes in the budgets of school districts across the commonwealth.

There are times when the New Jersey Department of Education gets it right. The rejection of the Garden State Virtual Charter School’s application was one such golden moment.

Days after Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced early childhood education will be part of his 2012 education reforms, a state nonprofit said more children in low-income families need access to education and was criticial of the state's patchwork of programs.

Colorado schools and colleges got an early Christmas gift as state economists revealed that proposed budget cuts can be eliminated because revenues are higher than originally thought.