Melinda Burns

Large-scale federal investment in American cities between 1950 and 1974 had some lasting benefits in economic growth, researchers say, despite the bad rap it currently has.

Columbia professor Deanna Kuhn says teachers should foster some debate to help kids learn the lost skill of thinking critically.

A look at foreclosures in two Southern California cities shows why some fared better than others in the housing crisis.

The real wages of Mexicans in the U.S. have declined since 1970, and Princeton sociologists say a “perfect storm” of anti-immigrant laws is to blame.

New Gene-Z device identifies diseases in plants, water, and food within 30 minutes, researchers say.

Economist John F. Helliwell has data that backs up why Americans are significantly happier on weekends and public holidays than during the workweek.

Growing up in poor neighborhoods significantly reduces the chances that a child will graduate from high school, sociologists say. Black children fare worst of all.

The former U.S. president asks for $93 million to eradicate a neglected disease that lingers in the new Republic of South Sudan.

In the new book “Out of Practice,” a primary care physician tells why he quit his practice and why the care of 78 million aging baby boomers can’t be left to specialists.

Most principals can’t identify or explain what constitutes good teaching, much less help teachers improve, according to a new book.

Biologists claim victory over rodents on Palmyra Atoll in an ongoing effort to restore seabird populations, this time in the tropics.

How the recession transfers wealth from the old to the young.

A new book, “The Failure of Environmental Education,” says schools are failing to teach kids how to save the planet.

How one California school district turns bad teachers over to their peers to help them improve their skills and save their jobs.

The world’s best school systems depend on teacher collaboration, but the concept has not caught on in the U.S. We found schools where teamwork is making a difference.

Diane Ravitch, the former assistant U.S. secretary of education, tells Miller-McCune what she thinks about No Child Left Behind now.

Even without fancy new cars or fuels, technology now motoring off the drawing board will help you take that lead foot off the accelerator and start driving green.

Swamped with patients and hit hard by state cuts to Medicaid, community health clinics struggle to make ends meet in the recession.

People who are environmentally responsible in their everyday lives seem to cast aside their green habits when traveling for leisure, a study notes.

Carl Cranor’s book “Legally Poisoned” says lax, outdated law puts Americans at risk from untested industrial chemicals.

A new study shows that the math curriculum of U.S. eighth-graders is two years behind what their peers in other countries are studying. In the U.S., the poorest students tend to get the least demanding math classes.

A growing farm-to-table strategy by food banks delivers free fresh fruit and vegetables to the needy.

Bucking a trend, a new book shows that group living can inoculate the homeless who are mentally ill against a return to the streets.

Better teachers in Catholic high schools and more semesters of math and language boost student earnings later in life, a study shows.

President Barack Obama sounds like his predecessors when he vows to kick the nation’s addiction to foreign oil.

A review of 83 studies provides strong evidence that reducing marijuana use could delay or even prevent some forms of psychosis.

Researchers say the decline of union rights in the U.S. contributes to the growing wage gap for all private sector workers, including nonunion members.

An international report on arms transfers suggests Europeans were eager to sell weapons to Gadhafi before Libya’s uprising this winter.

A volunteer program to protect nests for the tiny, threatened snowy plover on a popular surfing beach has proven a model, but the birds still can’t fly solo.

“Academically Adrift,” a new book on the failures of higher education, finds that undergrads don’t study, and professors don’t make them.

Harvard University President Emeritus Derek Bok says college professors don’t challenge their students because they don’t know how.

Government investment in prenatal and postnatal health care could help prevent violent behavior later in life, researcher says.

Genes for mental ability get a boost from socioeconomic status in a study of baby twins.

Californians must start paying real costs at the pump, a bipartisan transportation group focused on national security says.

Amid a frenzy of car buying, the Chinese are losing the race for traffic space, but it’s not too late for them to take another road.

A book on disaster law and policy urges stronger federal intervention to shore up natural barriers and protect the most vulnerable members of the community.

Blacks and Latinos who apply to the most selective public universities in some ‘race-blind’ states are being reshuffled downward to lower-quality schools, researchers say.

Passenger travel in the industrialized world has been stagnant for nearly a decade, researchers say.

Yale’s Bruce Ackerman, a constitutional scholar, warns that unilateralism in the “most dangerous branch” of government is setting the stage for a tragic future.

Why are black and Latino teachers leaving in droves? Because they want more autonomy in poor urban schools, researchers say.

Miller-McCune interviews two education experts about the promise and betrayal of diversity in the charter school movement.

How everything you learned in kindergarten affects your salary, your chances of going to college and owning a home, and even your retirement savings.

Americans living in high poverty bear the burden of more than 20 common diseases that the medical establishment largely does not monitor, diagnose or treat, studies show.

Clean-tech startups must look beyond a market of “bourgeois bohemians,” women investors say.

“Stretched Thin,” “Both Hands Tied,” and “The War on Welfare” are three new books that highlight welfare reform’s failure to address the enduring poverty of single mothers and their children.

On average, there’s no advantage to a charter school education except among the poor, national studies show. But in a few states, charter students are doing well.

Pre-teens living in high-crime neighborhoods avoid making friends, a University of Chicago pilot study has found.

New documentary on schools shines a spotlight on the plight of low-income and minority children, but the film flops when it comes to solutions.

Global community must step up to fight schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease as widespread as malaria, doctors say.

The dust on high peaks, blown in from Southwestern pastures, farms, mining roads and off-road vehicle parks, is hastening snowmelt and reducing the runoff into the Colorado River, scientists say.