In Florida, U.S. district judge Casey Rodgers is leading a movement to help released inmates find their way back into society through counseling, job placement and support.

FORBES: Crime Stories You Need to Know for 2011

Scale is the trick, and unfortunately the testing and accountability movement has not been able to even adequately manage a single district.

FORBES: High-Stakes Testing, Choice, and Bottom-up Education

What began as a small group of disaffected protesters hunkered down near the financial district in New York City is quickly becoming a national, and potentially global, movement.

FORBES: Occupy Wall Street Spreads Class Warfare Across the Country

As the standards movement gained strength in the early 1990s, however, educational and political leaders at the state, district, and even school levels began to show greater interest in how other countries defined academic quality and how U.S. students fared in relation to their peers in other nations.

UNESCO: II Part Analytic Section

In 2007 the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), then in opposition, used deliberative polling to select its mayoral candidate for the Athenian district of Marousi (in the real election, he lost).

ECONOMIST: Democracy is about discussion, not just voting