Blog Posts/Multimedia
Pre-Kraziness
What is the benefit conferred by preschool if there’s no school after the pre?
Race to the Top Wasn’t
What President Obama termed “the most meaningful education reform in a generation” has proven to be more a cautionary tale than a model.
Charter School Productivity Report: Red Flags or Red Herrings?
Our finding that charter school sectors in all 28 states that we study demonstrate higher productivity and/or return on investment than their traditional public school sectors has ruffled some feathers at the National School Boards Association.
The Politics of Teacher Evaluation Formulas
As states revamp their teacher evaluation systems, they continue to search for that magic number: the percentage of a teacher evaluation rating that should be based on student academic performance.
What We’re Watching: Steering Great Leaders into the Principal’s Office
On Thursday at 4, Fordham will host a panel discussion on their latest report, “Lacking Leaders: The Challenges of Principal Recruitment, Selection, and Placement.”
Remembering Gene Maeroff
Gene Maeroff was an education reporter for the New York Times who later served as founding director of the Hechinger Institute and wrote a number of books about education policy. He died last week in New York at the age of 75.
Not Teacher Quality, but Quality Teaching
Any pedagogy, curriculum, approach, or technology has to be within the skills of ordinary teachers to implement well and effectively. If it takes a superstar teacher it’s a nonstarter.
Can We Strike 1-to-1 from the Edu-Dictionary?
A 1-to-1 laptop or iPad roll out is not a new instructional model. Whether a student can or cannot carry a machine around all day tells us little to nothing about a school’s actual pedagogy, about the quality of interactions between students and teachers, or about the rigor of the software programs delivered through those devices.
Behind the Headline: After 10 Years at Work, Teachers in Some States Make Less than $40,000
In a post on Vox.com, Libby Nelson notes that the average teacher with a bachelor’s degree and 10 years of experience earns less than $40,000 in many states, and that “relatively low salaries for experienced teachers with bachelor’s degrees are the norm, not the exception, in the US, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress.”
What We’re Watching: Are U.S. Schools Prepared for Migrant Students?
Nina Rees discusses how schools will need to respond to rising numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the border.
Behind the Headline: Paul Ryan’s Anti-Poverty Plan is Paternalistic
On Thursday, Paul Ryan announced a new anti-poverty plan in a speech at AEI.
Americans Stink at Math (But We’re Much Better Now)
Elizabeth Green’s story for Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, “Why Do Americans Stink at Math?” is a must-read. But for all the time Green spends documenting the ways Americans stink at math, she never mentions that we’ve gotten much better.
Rosetta Stone, MegaStudy and Educational Software in Korea
In Korea, where popular teachers become millionaires by broadcasting their lectures online, schools and families are only very slowly warming up to other kinds of online learning.
Teacher Retention and Quality in Tennessee
Some Tennessee districts are much better at retaining highly effective teachers than others.
Course Access Opens New Horizons for Students
Course access programs allow students to enroll in a variety of online, blended, and face-to-face courses from a wide selection of accountable providers, in addition to the courses they take through their local schools
We’ll Miss You, Michael Gove
The path on which Gove and his predecessors placed English education resembles the path taken by U.S. education reformers.
The Federal Government Is Not a State, and ESEA Does Not Give Arne Duncan Mandate Authority
Where is the “plain language” of ESEA that gives the Department of Education the authority to mandate statewide teacher-evaluation systems, particularly for states that want waivers on school accountability. Just as with ObamaCare and the question of whether the federal government is a “state,” the administration won’t have a good answer.
Money-Ed
Across all 28 states in the study, public charter school sectors were more cost effective and/or generated a higher return on investment (ROI) than traditional public schools
What We’re Watching: OECD Test for Schools
Schools that want to see if they are holding their students to high standards can test their students using an exam given around the globe. A story on PBS Newshour takes a close look at the test.
Sweden and School Choice
Last week, Slate published a critique of Sweden’s school choice program that managed to be both inaccurate and fallacious.
Five Thoughts on the New Yorker Cheating Story
Rachel Aviv’s article about a cheating scandal involving teachers at one middle school in Atlanta is very well-written, but the sources of the pressure on Atlanta teachers and principals to improve and the threat behind it are more complex than NCLB alone.
Why Kids are Hiring Competency- Based Education
An alternative school in Boston offers flexibility in pacing, help when students need it, and the chance to continuously reengage on material even if you didn’t master it the first time around–in all, the flexibility, support, and hope that human beings, and particularly teenagers, crave.
Glenn Beck’s Common Core Hysteria Doesn’t Help Advance Conservative Education Policy
Screenings of “We Will Not Conform” might channel populist angst on the right against the Common Core, but they do nothing to address the very real concern that inspired the Common Core in the first place — the fact that standards for what kids should know varied wildly across the states — or to propose alternative standards.
What We’re Watching: Underwater Dreams
Four undocumented teenagers from a high-poverty high school in Phoenix win a national robotics competition in this documentary produced by Jeb Bush, Jr.
The Future of Test-based Accountability
We may be in a transformative period fueled by a kind of restlessness that nobody is getting accountability right, the achievement problem remains, and ideas are not manifold about what to do next.
Computers Enable Good Teachers
The power of educational technology does not come from replacing teachers, but from empowering teachers to provide better instruction.
Former Indiana State Chief Tony Bennett and the Politics of Personal Destruction
Last summer, Tony Bennett resigned the Florida superintendency when slammed with alleged improprieties from his tenure as Indiana state chief. Last week, he was cleared of all but one very minor charge.
What We’re Listening To: What’s In the Common Core Math Standards?
Jason Zimba, one of the lead authors of the Common Core math standards, talks about what’s in the standards.
Behind the Headline: Karen Lewis For Chicago Mayor? Union Leader Forms Exploratory Committee
Karen Lewis, the controversial head of the Chicago Teachers Union, has formed an “unofficial exploratory committee” to look into a possible challenge to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in next year’s mayoral race.
Two Charter School Debates: When Philosophical Opposition Masquerades as Policy Commentary
There’s lots of important work out there aimed at improving the way the charter sector works, but it often gets overshadowed by articles that are just thinly veiled attacks on the idea of charter schooling.
What We’re Watching: Common Core: Realities of the Rollout
Fordham’s Amber Northern talks about Common Core implementation at the EWA’s 67th National Seminar.
The Splintering School Reform Movement
Different reformers prefer different reforms, and those reforms are colliding. Something has to give. We need to either pause the move to the tougher tests or pause the stakes attached to the teacher evaluations.
Private Schools Should Learn from Charter Schools Without Adopting their Regulatory Scheme
Do we really want government agencies to oversee and regulate private schools that participate in choice programs?
Behind the Headline: Charter School Battle Erodes Middle Ground
In Boston, the debate over whether to raise the cap on charter school spending is becoming more and more polarized.
How Does Teacher Attrition Compare to Other Professions?
Of the college graduates who became teachers, 30 percent left within six years.
Implementing Common Core: Curriculum Part 2
A look at key curricular decisions that will be encountered as CCSS makes its way through the school system and the potential political controversies that this process may provoke.
Behind the Headline: How D.C. Got To Be an Education Hot Spot
Richard Whitmire looks at the evolving competition between district schools and charter schools in Washington, D.C. in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
Whither the NEA?
Perhaps the historic coupling of the NEA and the Democratic Party is loosening a bit.
Disruptive Innovation And Education
Disrupting our K–12 schools or our public school districts is impossible today because there is no nonconsumption of education in this country, but helping our schools use disruptive innovation to disrupt the classroom—the way they arrange teaching and learning—is possible.
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