Over the past 18 months Race to the Top—the Obama administration’s $4.35 billion program designed to advance public school innovation and student achievement—has prompted furious  competition between state and local school districts, raising expectations that some sort of breakthrough in K-12 education may be at hand. Yet skeptics might be forgiven for harboring doubts about…

Samuel Casey Carter is, in a way, the Tom Paine of the movement to raise school achievement in low-income neighborhoods. He coined the term "no excuses schools” for those run by people who think that no matter how bad their students' family lives, with great teaching they should be able to learn just as much…

Veritas Preparatory Academy, a Phoenix charter school near 24th Street and Lincoln Drive, is one of a dozen schools profiled in a new book, On Purpose: How Great School Cultures Form Strong Character, by education leader and author Samuel Casey Carter. In the book, Carter writes that schools that nurture students, have high expectations and focus on character…