With that bold declaration, Gov. Jan Brewer proclaimed before a joint session of the Legislature this week that Arizona now boasts a budget surplus, the first in four years.

Heading into continued budget negotiations with Congress, as well as November’s presidential election, the Obama administration insisted this week in Las Vegas that the federal government should not retreat from hefty investments in education, infrastructure and research and development.

Tom Loveless is a former sixth grade teacher and Harvard public policy professor. He’s been studying the achievement gap, education policy, and school reform. So how can we reform our school district? What would teachers and the state have to do? How do we close the achievement gap? And can we compete on a global scale with other countries, whose students surpass us? Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution weighs in.

Art never disappears. It only takes vacations. Maybe three years is more of a sabbatical. So it is with the collection of the Las Vegas Art Museum, which succumbed to the economy and shuttered its doors in February 2009. Now, its long-homeless inventory will land at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

For nearly three years, the Las Vegas Art Museum collection has been looking for a good place to hang. The long-anticipated announcement today that LVAM is teaming with the UNLV College of Fine Arts to exhibit the LVAM collection this year is a relief to any Las Vegan concerned that the museum’s closing undercut the city’s attempts to enhance its cultural image.